" 

Santa  Barbara  Teachers  Library. 


fi»ttpt*»  Off  Ice,  Court    ll«m 


tOOL 

MANUM 

SAS  : 


SOCIAL   AND    ETHICAL 

INTERPRETATIONS    IN    MENTAL 

DEVELOPMENT 


BY    Till:    SAME  AUTHOR. 

HANDBOOK  OF  PSYCHOLOGY:  Vol.  I.  SENSES  AND  INTELLECT. 
Second  Edition.  1891.  New  York,  Holt  &  Co.;  London,  Macmil- 
lans. 

HANDBOOK  OF  PSYCHOLOGY:  Vol.  II.  FEELING  AND  WILL. 
1892.  Same  publishers. 

ELEMENTS  OF   PSYCHOLOGY.     1893.    Same  publishers. 

MENTAL  DEVELOPMENT  IN  THE  CHILD  AND  THE  RACE. 
New  York  and  London,  Macmillans.  1895.  Second  Reprint  of 
Second  Edition,  1897.  German  Translation,  Berlin,  Reuther  u. 
Reichard,  1897.  French  Translation,  Paris,  F.  Alcan,  1897. 


IN  PREPARATION. 

DICTIONARY  OF  PHILOSOPHY  AND  PSYCHOLOGY.  Edited 
(with  an  international  corps  of  contributors)  by  J.  MARK  BALDWIN. 
New  York  and  London,  Macmillans. 


SOCIAL    AND    ETHICAL 

INTERPRETATIONS    IN    MENTAL 

DEVELOPMENT 

in  Social 


BY 

JAMES    MARK    BALDWIN 

PROFESSOR   IN    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY;    CO-EDITOR   OF  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   REVIEW 


WORK  CROWNED    WITH   THE   GOLD  MEDAL    OF  THE 
ROYAL  ACADEMY  OF  DENMARK 


Santa  Barbara  Teachers  library       '( 
Supt's  Office,  Court  Uo 


JLo 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO..  LTD. 
1897 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1897, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


XottjooD  \9rnt 

J.  8.  Cuihing  *  Co.      Berwick  ft  Smith 
Norwood  MM.    I    -   \ 


257 

I, 


To  THE  MEMBERS 

OF  THE 

Princeton  psychological 

FOR  THE  YEAR  1896-1897 


CO 


PREFACE 

THIS  volume  is  a  continuation  of  the  studies  in  genetic 
psychology  begun  in  my  Mental  Development  in  the  Child 
and  the  Race.  As  was  announced  in  the  earlier  work,  I 
had  intended  to  publish  the  volume  of  '  Interpretations ' 
under  the  same  general  heading  of  '  Mental  Develop- 
ment '  and  to  include  in  it  certain  educational  '  Interpre- 
tations '  also.  It  seems  best,  however,  for  the  sake  of 
unity  of  treatment  in  this  volume, — and  also  on  account 
of  its  size,  —  to  omit  the  educational  matter  for  the  pres- 
ent, and  also  to  make  this  volume  quite  independent  of 
the  former  work,  except  in  so  far  as  the  natural  connec- 
tion requires  somewhat  frequent  reference  to  it.  This 
departure  from  my  original  plan  also  enables  me  to 
include  in  Part  II.  certain  chapters  which  were  written 
with  reference  to  the  question  set  by  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Denmark.1 

I  have  also  endeavoured,  in  view  of  the  lack  in  English 
of  a  book  on  Social  Psychology  which  can  be  used  in  the 
universities  in  connection  with  courses  in  psychology, 

1  "  Is  it  possible  to  establish,  for  the  individual  isolated  in  society,  rules  of 
conduct  drawn  entirely  from  his  personal  nature;  and  if  such  rules  are  pos- 
sible, what  is  their  relation  to  the  rules  which  would  be  reached  from  the 
consideration  of  society  as  a  whole?"  A  brief  analysis  of  my  essay,  drawn 
up  by  Professor  Hoflcling  in  the  report  to  the  Danish  Academy,  may  be  seen 
in  the  Comptes  Rendus  de  fAcademie  du  Danemark.  (Reprinted  in  the 
Philosophical  Review,  July,  1897.) 

vii 


viii  Preface 

ethics,  and  social  science,  to  make  my  essay  available  for 
such  a  purpose.  This  has  led  to  such  expansions  —  some 
may  call  them  repetitions  —  of  the  fundamental  ideas  of 
the  work  as  seemed  necessary  to  a  fairly  complete  work- 
ing-out of  the  social  element  in  connection  with  each  of 
the  greater  psychological  functions.  Part  I.  is  thus  made, 
as  far  as  its  topics  are  concerned,  a  more  or  less  complete 
study  of  social  and  ethical  psychology.  Certain  of  the 
sections  have  already  been  printed,  as  footnotes  of 
acknowledgment  to  the  journals  show. 

The  writers  to  whom  I  am  most  indebted  are  referred 
to  in  locis.  I  find  my  opinions  in  the  matter  of  the  social 
function  of  imitation  lying  near  to  those  of  M.  G.  Tarde. 
The  agreement  is,  however,  more  a  coincidence  than  a 
direct  connection,  as  readers  of  my  Mental  Develop- 
ment may  remember.  I  take  pleasure  in  recognizing  a 
more  fundamental  agreement  on  many  of  the  main  con- 
clusions of  both  my  volumes  with  those  of  my  friend, 
Professor  Josiah  Royce,  whose  views  in  the  general  field 
of  social  psychology,  I  regret  to  say,  remain  still  un- 
published in  complete  systematic  form.  The  frequent 
references  made  to  Professor  Royce  in  my  text  and  in 
the  Appendices  will  show  the  advantage  I  have  had 
from  his  criticisms  and  counsels.  The  general  knowledge 
also  that  he  was  reaching  similar  conclusions  on  many 
points  has  given  me  the  sense  of  social  confirmation  on 
which,  as  readers  of  my  book  will  see,  I  put  more  than 
customary  emphasis. 

The  motto  of  Book  I.,  the  quotation  from  St.  Luke, 
was  suggested  to  me  by  my  friend  and  colleague,  Presi- 


Preface  ix 

dent  Patton,  who  preached  from  it  a  remarkable  sermon 
—  his  latest  baccalaureate  discourse  in  Princeton.  In  this 
sermon  he  made  use  of  the  idea  of  the  identity  of  ego 
and  alter  in  our  thought,  much  on  the  lines  on  which, 
as  I  think,  the  social  philosophy  of  the  future  will  be 
developed. 

Besides  the  thin  volume  of  '  Educational  Interpreta- 
tions '  which  I  hope  to  get  ready  in  a  reasonable  time,  I 
have  a  more  remote  intention  of  some  day  gathering  into 
another  thin  volume  of  '  Biological  Interpretations  '  the 
considerations  on  evolution  upon  which  a  more  adequate 
exposition  of  the  principle  of  Organic  Selection l  would 

rest. 

J.  M.  B. 

PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY,  September,  1897. 

1  Cf.  Appendix  A. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

PREFACE  vii 


INTRODUCTION 


BOOK   I 

THE  PERSON  PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE 
PART  I.     THE  IMITATIVE  PERSON 

CHAPTER   I 
THE  SELF-CONSCIOUS  PERSON 7 

§  I.   The  Dialectic  of  Personal  Growth,  7.      §  2.   The  Person  as  a     j 
Self,  9.     §  3.   The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self,  34. 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  SOCIAL  PERSON 57 

§  i.  Social  Heredity,  57.  §  2.  Physical  Heredity  and  the  Social 
Environment,  64.  §  3.  Social  Suppression  of  the  Unfit,  71. 
§  4.  Social  Variations,  82.  §  5.  Social  Judgment,  84.  §  6.  Con- 
ception of  the  Social  Person,  87. 

PART  II.    THE  INVENTIVE  PERSON 

CHAPTER   III 

INVENTION  vs.  IMITATION 90 

§  i.  The  Process  of  Invention,  91.  §  2.  The  Child's  Inventions, 
97-  §  3-  Selective  thinking,  I2O.  §  4.  Private  Judgment,  123. 

xi 


xii  Contents 

CHAPTER   IV 

FACE 

\i.  AIDS  TO  INVENTION 126 

§  i.    language,  128.     §  2.    Play,  139.     §  3.   Art,  147. 

CHAPTER   V 

THE  GENIUS 154 

§  i.  The  Genius  a  Variation,  154.  §  2.  The  Judgment  of  the  Genius, 
'59-  §  3-  The  Inventions  of  the  Genius,  168.  §  4.  Social  and 
Imitative  Selection,  181. 

PART  III.    THE  PERSON'S  EQUIPMENT 

CHAPTER    VI 

His  INSTINCTS  AND  EMOTIONS 185 

§  i.    Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion,  185.     §  2.    Hashfulness  and 

V. Modesty,  195.  §  3.  Sympathy,  220.  §  4.  Social  Emotion  as 
Such:  Personal  Opposition,  227.  §5.  Theory  of  Mob-Action,  235. 
§  6.  Conclusions  for  Social  Theory,  245. 

<  IIAITKR    VII 

His  INTELLIGENCE 247 

§  i.   Nature  of  Intelligence,  247.     §2.    Impersonal  Intelligence,  253. 
§  3.    Personal  Intelligence,  257.     §  4.   Social  Intelligence,  282. 

<  HAPTER   VIII 

Hi^  SI-MIMKNTS 294 

$  I.  The  Genesis  of  Sentiment,  294.  §  2.  Ethical  Si-ntiiiu-nt.  297. 
§  3.  Social  Sentimeht  as  Such:  Publicity,  311.  §  4.  Practical 
Reason,  320.  §  5.  Religious  Sentiment,  327. 

PART   IV.     Tm    Pi- RAIN'S  S\v  in>\^ 

(II  MMKR    IX 

His  Pmv.vu.  SANCIIONS 358 

f    I.   The   Sanction    of  Impulse,    363.     §    2.   The    Lower    Hedonic 
'iction,  368.      §3.   The  Sanction   of  Desire,    372.      §  4.   The 
Higher   Hedonic   Sanction,    392.     §  5.    The   Sanction   of  Right, 
394- 


Contents  xiii 


CHAPTER  x 

PAGE 

His  SOCIAL  SANCTIONS  :   SOCIAL  OPPOSITION        .        ...        .        .    405 

§  I.  The  Natural  Sanctions,  406.  §  2.  The  Pedagogical  and  Con- 
ventional Sanctions,  413.  §  3.  The  Civil  Sanctions,  421. 
§  4.  The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions,  434. 


BOOK   II 

SOCIETY 
PART  V.     THE  PERSON  IN  ACTION 

CHAPTER   XI 

THE  SOCIAL  FORCES 449 

§  i.  Distinction  of  Forces,  451.  §  2.  The  Particularizing  Social 
Force,  455.  §  3.  The  Generalizing  Social  Force,  465. 

PART  VI.     SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION 

CHAPTER   XI 1 

SOCIAL  MATTER  AND  PROCESS 475 

§  I.  Distinction  of  Problems,  475.  §  2.  Historical  Theories,  478. 
§  3.  The  Matter  of  -Social  Organization,  487.  §  4.  The  Process 
of  Social  Organization,  507. 

CHAPTER   XIII 

SOCIAL  PROGRESS 510 

§  i.  The  Determination  of  Social  Progress,  510.  §  2.  Dialectic  of 
Social  Growth,  512.  §3.  The  Direction  of  Social  Progress,  515. 
§  4.  Conclusion  on  the  Biological  Analogy,  520. 

PART  VII.     PRACTICAL  CONCLUSIONS 

CHAPTER  XIV 

RULES  OF  CONDUCT 524 

§  i.  Rules  in  the  Sphere  of  Impulse,  525.  §  2.  Intelligent  Rules,  527. 
§  3.  Ethical  Rules,  532.  §  4.  The  Final  Conflict,  538 . 


xiv  Contents 


CHAFFER   XV 

PAGE 

RETROSPECT:  SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 542 


APPENDIX  A.    SOCIAL  HEREDITY  AND  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION   .        .  545 

APPENDIX  B.    ON  'SELECTION' 547 

APPENDIX  C.    THE  COSMIC  AND  THE  MORAL 550 

APPENDIX  D.   THE  GENESIS  OF  SOCIALITY 555 

APPENDIX  E.    THK  PERSONAL  AND  SOCIAL  SENSE  .        .        .557 

APPENDIX  F.     .\MHH<>i'<>LOGiCAL  NOTES 563 

APPENDIX  G.    DARWIN'S  Jt  M;MENT 567 

APPENDIX  H.    NOTE  ON  HEGEL 569 

INDEX 571 


INTRODUCTION 

IT  is  my  aim,  in  the  present  essay,  to  inquire  to  what 
extent  the  principles  of  the  development  of  the  individual 
mind  apply  also  to  the  evolution  of  society.1  This  thesis 
being  the  main  one,  it  naturally  falls  into  two  main  in- 
quiries : 2  what  are  the  principles  which  the  individual 
shows  in  his  mental  life,  —  principles  of  organization, 
growth,  and  conduct  ?  —  and  what  additional  principles,  if 
any,  does  society  exhibit  in  its  forms  of  organization, 
progress,  and  activity? 

There  are  three  more  or  less  '  scientific '  3  methods  by 
which  this  general  problem  might  be  investigated,  which 
I  may  name  in  order  : 

FIRST,  the  Anthropological  or  Historical  method,  which 
aims  to  discover  in  the  history  of  society  the  same  prin- 
ciples as  those  which  individual  mental  growth  shows.  Its 
question  is :  Does  the  individual  in  his  progress  recapitu- 
late, in  any  sense,  the  progress  of  society  as  shown  in  its 
history  from  the  earliest  forms  of  organization  to  the 
latest  ? 

SECOND,  the  Sociological  or  Statistical  method,  which 
aims,  by  analytical  and  inductive  examinations  of  society, 

1  Compare  the  personal  remarks  (apropos  of  the  contents  of  the  work)  in 
the  Preface. 

2  Books  I.  and  II.  respectively. 

8  That  is,  in  contrast  with  deductive,  speculative,  and  philosophical  in- 
quiries about  society. 

B  I 


2  Introduction 

to  find  out  the  principles  of  its  organization  and  the 
method  of  its  growth ;  the  results  to  be  compared  with 
those  of  descriptive  psychology. 

THIRD,  the  Genetic  method,  which  has  application  in  two 
fields  of  investigation : 

1.  The    psychological    development    of    the   individual 
examined  for  light  upon  the  social  elements  and  move- 
ments  of   his   nature,  whereby   he    is   able  to  enter  into 
social  organization  with  his  fellows.     This  may  be  called 
the  Psychogenetic  method. 

2.  The  biological  forces  and  their  results  in  animal  life, 
together  with  the  psychological  phenomena  of  animal  life, 
examined  for  light   upon   the  antecedents  of   the   social 
forces  and  institutions  which  are  human.      This  may  be 
called  the  Biogenetic  method. 

These  three  methods  are  not  strictly  distinct,  nor  are 
their  fields  of  application  entirely  separate ;  but  the  de- 
scription of  them  may  serve  to  indicate  certain  conver^ini; 
paths  by  which  the  general  problem  may  be  approached. 
A  complete  scientific  research  should  include  them  all. 

The  method  of  the  present  essay  is  the  Genetic:  the 
form  of  that  method  which  inquires  into  the  psychological 
development  of  tlie  human  individual  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  liis  growth  for  light  upon  his  social  nature,  and  also  upon 
the  social  organization  in  ivhich  he  bears  a  part.  The 
evidence  presented  in  this  study  is  therefore,  in  the  main, 
Psychogenetic ;  it  is  drawn  largely  from  direct  observation 
of  children.  The  main  thought  which  runs  through  it  is 
the  conception  of  the  growth  of  the  child's  sense  of  per- 
sonality. This  gives  its  title  to  Book  I.  The  justification 
of  this  way  of  treating  the  problem  must  appear,  if  any- 
where, in  the  results. 


Introduction  3 

At  the  same  time,  the  other  methods  are  not  without  evi- 
dent connection  with  the  one  here  adopted.  The  anthropo- 
logical bearings  of  the  genetic  data  which  I  employ  are 
frequently  indicated  in  the  text.  The  analytical  method 
is  considered,  and  in  a  measure  employed,  in  Part  VI. 
The  value  of  the  other  aspect  of  the  genetic  problem,  the 
Biogenetic,  is  not  so  great,  in  my  opinion,  as  is  customarily 
supposed ;  this  may  be  seen  in  the  discussions,  in  locis,  of 
certain  biological  principles.  Two  of  the  short  Appendices 
(A  and  B)  also  deal  with  biological  conceptions. 

The  advantage  of  the  psychological  genetic  method  is 
that  it  is  constantly  based  upon  observed  facts  and  may 
be  controlled  by  them.  Psychological  observations  of  the 
child  fall  within  the  range  of  positive  science ;  and  their 
value  consists  in  the  possibility  of  their  repeated  corrobo- 
ration.  The  theoretical  inferences  of  the  work  are  thus 
made  more  secure ;  and  they  may  be  supported,  moreover, 
by  a  corresponding  appeal  to  the  facts  of  social  life  for 
confirmation. 


BOOK    I 
THE    PERSON    PUBLIC   AND    PRIVATE 


"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself."     "And  who  is  my  neighbour?  " 

—  Gospel  of  Luke. 


PART  I 
THE  IMITATIVE  PERSON 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  SELF-CONSCIOUS  PERSON 
§  i.    The  Dialectic  of  Personal  Growth 

i.  "ONE  of  the  most  interesting  tendencies  of  the  very 
young  child  in  its  responses  to  its  environment  is  the  ten- 
dency to  recognize  differences  of  personality.  It  responds 
to  what  have  been  called  'suggestions  of  personality.'  As 
early  as  the  second  month  it  distinguishes  its  mother's  or 
nurse's  touch  in  the  dark.  It  learns  characteristic  methods 
of  holding,  taking  up,  patting,  and  adapts  itself  to  these 
personal  variations.  It  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  the 
child's  behaviour  toward  things  which  are  not  persons.  I 
think  this  is  the  child's  very  first  step  toward  a  sense  of 
the  qualities  which  distinguish  persons.  The  sense  of 
uncertainty  grows  stronger  and  stronger  in  its  dealings 
with  persons.  A  person  stands  for  a  group  of  experiences 
quite  unstable  in  its  prophetic  as  it  is  in  its  historical 
meaning.  This  we  may,  for  brevity  of  expression,  assum- 
ing it  to  be  first  in  order  of  development,  call  the  *  pro- 
jective  stage '  in  the  growth  of  the  child's  personal 
consciousness. 

"  Further  observation  of  children  shows  that  the  instru- 
ment of  transition  from  such  a  projective  to  a  subjective 

7 


8  T/u  Self-conscious  Person 

^e  of  personality  is  the  child's  active  bodily  self,  and 
the  method  of  it  is  the  function  of  imitation.  When  the 
organism  is  ripe  for  the  enlargement  of  its  active  range 
by  new  accommodations,  then  he  begins  to  be  dissatis- 
fied with  'projects,'  with  contemplation,  and  starts  on  his 
career  of  imitation.  And  of  course  he  imitates  persons. 
•  Further,  persons  are  bodies  which  move.  And  among 
these  bodies  which  move,  which  have  certain  projective 
attributes,  a  very  peculiar  and  interesting  one  is  his  own 
body.  It  has  connected  with  it  certain  intimate  features 
which  all  others  lack  —  strains,  stresses,  resistances, 
pains,  etc.,  an  inner  felt  series  added  to  the  new  imita- 
tive series.  But  it  is  only  when  a  peculiar  experience 
arises  which  we  call  effort  that  there  comes  that  great  line 
leavage  in  his  experience  which  indicates  the  rise  of 
volition,  and  which  separates  off  the  series  now  first  really 
subjective.  What  has  formerly  been  'projective'  now 
becomes  'subjective.'  This  we  may  call  the  subjective 
stage  in  the  growth  of  the  self-notion.  It  rapidly  assimi- 
lates to  itself  all  the  other  elements  by  which  the  child's 
own  body  differs  in  his  experience  from  other  active  bodies 

—  all  the  passive  inner  series  of  pains,  pleasures,  strains, 
etc.  Again  it  is  easy  to  see  what  now  happens.  The 
child's  subject  sense  goes  out  by  a  sort  of  return  dia- 
lectic to  illuminate  the  other  persons.  The  'project'  of 
the  earlier  period  is  now  lighted  up,  claimed,  clothed  on 
with  the  raiment  of  selfhood,  by  analogy  with  the  subjec- 
tive. The  subjective  becomes  ejective ;  that  is,  other 
people's  bodies,  says  the  child  to  himself,  have  experiences 
in  them  such  as  mine  has.  They  are  also  mes;  let  them 
be  assimilated  to  my  me-copy.  This  is  the  third  stage; 

the  ejective,  or  social  self,  is  born. 


"The  'ego'  and  the  'alter'  are  thus  born  together. 
Both  are  crude  and  unreflective,  largely  organic.  And 
the  two  get  purified  and  clarified  together  by  this  twofold 
reaction  between  project  and  subject,  and  between  subject 
and  eject.  My  sense  of  myself  grows  by  imitation  of  you, 
and  my  sense  of  yourself  grows  in  terms  of  my  sense  of 
myself.  Both  ego  and  alter  are  thus  essentially  social ; 
each  is  a  socius  and  each  is  an  imitative  creation."  1 

This  give-and-take  between  the  individual  and  his  fel- 
lows, looked  at  generally,  we  may  call  the  Dialectic  of 
Personal  Groivtk.  It  serves  as  the  point  of  departure 
for  the  main  positions  developed  in  the  following  pages  ; 
and  the  lines  of  the  summary  sketch  will  be  filled  in 
as  we  advance. 

§  2.     The  Person  as  a  Self 

2.  The  outcome  serves  to  afford  a  point  of  departure 
for  the  view  which  we  may  entertain  of  the  person  as  he 
appears  to  himself  in  society.  If  it  be  true,  as  much  evi- 
dence goes  to  show,  that  what  the  person  thinks  as  him- 
self is  a  pole  or  terminus  at  one  end  of  an  opposition  in 
the  sense  of  personality  generally,  and  that  the  other  pole 
or  terminus  is  the  thought  he  has  of  the  other  person,  the 
'alter,'  then  it  is  impossible  to  isolate  his  thought  of  himself 
at  any  time  and  say  that  in  thinking  of  himself  he  is  not 

1  Quotation,  somewhat  condensed  and  revised,  from  the  author's  Mental 
Development  in  the  Child  and  the  Race,  ad  ed.,  p.  335.  A  position  similar  to 
this  has  been  taken  by  Professor  Josiah  Royce.  Cf.  also  Avenarius,  Der 
memchl.  Weltbegriff,  I  have  indicated  in  the  earlier  work  (Afent.  Devel., 
P-  339)  tne  relation  of  my  position  to  Avenarius'  theory  of  fntrojection.  On 
certain  anthropological  parallels  suggested  by  Hoffding  and  Avenarius,  see 
Appendix  F. 


io  Tlu  Self-conscious  Person 

essentially  thinking  of  the  alter  also.1  What  he  calls  him- 
self now  is  in  large  measure  an  incorporation  of  elements 
that,  at  an  earlier  period  of  his  thought  of  personality,  he 
called  some  one  else.  The  acts  now  possible  to  himself, 
and  so  used  by  him  to  describe  himself  in  thought  to  him- 
self, were  formerly  only  possible  to  the  other ;  but  by  imi- 
tating that  other  he  has  brought  them  over  to  the  opposite 
pole,  and  found  them  applicable,  with  a  richer  meaning  and 
a  modified  value,  as  true  predicates  of  himself  also.  If  he 
thinks  of  himself  in  any  particular  past  time,  he  can  single 
out  what  was  then  he,  as  opposed  to  what  has  since  become 
he;  and  the  residue,  the  part  of  him  that  has  since  become 
he,  that  was  then  only  thought  of  —  if  it  was  thought  of 
as  an  attribute  of  personality  at  all  — as  attaching  to  some 
one  with  whom  he  was  acquainted.  For  example,  last 
year  I  thought  of  my  friend  \V.  as  a  man  who  had  great 
skill  on  the  bicycle  and  who  wrote  readily  on  the  type- 
writer ;  my  sense  of  his  personality  included  these  accom- 
plishments, in  what  I  have  called  a  '  projective '  way.  My 
sense  of  myself  did  not  have  these  elements,  except  as  my 
thought  of  my  normal  capacity  to  acquire  delicate  move- 
ments was  comprehensive.  But  now,  this  year,  I  have 
learned  to  do  both  these  things.  I  have  taken  the  ele- 
ments formerly  recognized  in  W.'s  personality,  and  by  imi- 
tative learning  brought  them  over  to  myself.  I  now  think 
of  myself  as  one  who  rides  a  '  wheel '  and  writes  on  a 
'machine.'  But  I  am  able  to  think  of  myself  thus  only 
as  my  thought  includes,  in  a  way  now  called  'subjective,' 

1  In  isolating  the  •  thought  elements '  in  the  self,  I  do  not,  of  course,  deny  the 
organic  sensation  and  feeling  elements;  but  for  our  present  purposes  the  lat- 
ter may  be  neglected.  I  add,  in  Appendix  E,  short  notices  of  positions  taken 
by  Bradley  and  Royce.  which  may  serve  as  an  introduction  to  a  more  complete 
view  on  the  psychology  of  self-consciousness. 


The  Person  as  a  Self  n 

the  personal  accomplishments  of  W.,  and  with  him  of  the 
more  or  less  generalized  alter  which  in  this  illustration  we 
have  taken  him  to  stand  for.  So  the  truth  we  now  learn 
is  this  :  that  very  many  of  the  particular  marks  which  I 
now  call  mine,  when  I  think  of  myself,  have  had  just  this 
origin.  I  have  first  found  them  in  my  social  environment, 
and  by  reason  of  my  social  and  imitative  disposition,  have 
transferred  them  to  myself  by  trying  to  act  as  if  they  were 
true  of  me,  and  so  coming  to  find  out  that  they  are  true 
of  me.  And  further,  all  the  things  I  hope  to  learn,  to  ac- 
quire, to  become,  all  —  if  I  think  of  them  in  a  way  to  have 
any  clear  thought  of  my  possible  future  —  are  now,  before 
I  acquire  them,  possible  elements  of  my  thought  of  others, 
of  the  social  alter,  or  of  what  considered  generally  we  may 
call  the  'socius.' 

But  we  should  also  note  that  what  has  been  said  of  the 
one  pole  of  this  dialectical  relation,  the  pole  of  self,  is 
equally  true  of  the  other  also  —  the  pole  represented  by 
the  other  person,  the  alter.  What  do  I  have  in  mind  when 
I  think  of  him  as  a  person  ?  Evidently  I  must  construe 
him,  a  person,  in  terms  of  what  I  think  of  myself,  the  only 
person  whom  I  know  in  the  intimate  way  we  call  'subjec- 
tive.' I  cannot  say  that  my  thought  of  my  friend  W.  is 
exhausted  by  the  movements  of  wheel-riding  and  typewrit- 
ing ;  nor  of  any  collection  of  such  acts,  considered  for 
themselves.  Back  of  it  all  there  is  the  attribution  of  the 
very  fact  of  subjectivity  which  I  have  myself.  And  the 
subjectivity  of  him  —  it  is  just  like  that  of  me,  to  the  de- 
gree to  which  I  have  any  picture  of  it  at  all.  I  constantly 
enrich  the  actions  which  were  at  first  his  alone,  and  then 
became  mine  by  imitation  of  him,  with  the  meaning,  the 
rich  subjective  value,  the  interpretation  in  terms  of  private 


t  2  The  Self-conscious  Person 

ownership,  which  my  appropriation  of  them  in  the  first 
instance  from  him,  has  enabled  me  to  make.  So  my 
thought  of  any  other  man  —  or  all  other  men  —  is,  to  the 
richest  degree,  that  which  I  understand  of  myself,  together 
with  the  uncertainties  of  interpretation  which  my  further 
knowledge  of  his  acts  enables  me  to  conjecture.  I  think 
him  rational,  emotional,  volitional,  as  I  am  ; 1  and  the  de- 
tails of  his  more  special  characteristics,  as  far  as  I  under- 
stand them  at  all,  I  weave  out  of  possible  actions  of  my 
"\vn,  when  circumstances  call  me  out  in  similar  ways. 
But  there  is  always  the  sense  that  there  is  more  to  under- 
stand about  him ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  he  constantly,  by 
the  diversities  between  us  which  I  do  not  yet  comprehend, 
sets  me  new  actions  to  imitate  or  to  avoid  in  my  own 
growth. 

So  the  dialectic  may  be  read  thus  :  my  thought  of  self  is 
in  the  main,  as  to  its  character  as  a  personal  self,  filled  up 
with  my  thought  of  others,  distributed  variously  as  indi- 
viduals ;  and  my  thought  of  others,  as  persons,  is  mainly 
filled  up  with  myself.  In  other  words,  but  for  certain 
minor  distinctions  in  the  filling,  and  for  certain  compelling 
distinctions  between  that  which  is  immediate  and  that  which 
is  objective,  tltc  ego  and  tlic  alter  arc  to  our  thought  one  and 
tht  same  thing. 

3.  I  do  not  care  in  this  connection  to  track  out  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  subjective  or  immediate  and  the 
objective ;  nor  to  ask  what  it  is  that  sets  the  bounds  in 
fact  to  the  person.  What  concerns  us  is  independent  of 
these  inquiries,  having  to  do  with  the  question  :  What  is 

1  Eren  temporary  affective  experiences  tend  to  be  •  ejected.'  When  I  have 
*  headache  I  cannot  tee  a  person  riding,  jumping,  etc.,  without  attributing  to 
him  the  throbbing  which  such  actions  would  produce  in  my  own  head. 


The  Person  as  a  Self  13 

in  consciousness  when  one  thinks  of  himself  or  of  another 
person  ?  This,  it  is  evident,  is  a  sufficient  introduction  to 
a  number  of  questions  of  high  social  import  ;  for  we  may 
ask  :  When  a  man  asserts  himself,  what  is  it  that  he  really 
asserts  ?  When  he  sympathizes  with  another,  what  exactly 
is  that  '  other '  ?  And  how  do  all  the  emotions,  and  desires, 
and  mental  movements  of  whatever  kind  which  pass  through 
his  consciousness  involve  others  who  are  in  social  connection 
with  him?  I  claim,  indeed,  that  it  is  just  this  kind  of  in- 
quiries that  most  concern  the  social  theorist  just  now,  and 
with  him  the  political  thinker ;  and  the  vagueness  and 
cross-firing  which  prevail  in  some  of  the  discussions  of 
these  men  are  due  in  great  part  to  inadequate  analysis 
of  the  psychological  concepts  which  they  use. 

To  get  such  inquiries  down  to  a  psychological  basis,  the 
first  requisite  is  to  be  reached  in  the  concept  of  the  per- 
son. Not  the  person  as  we  look  at  him  in  action,  alone,  or 
chiefly  ;  but  the  person  as  he  thinks  of  himself.  We  con- 
stantly presume  to  tell  him  what  his  chief  end  is,  what  as 
an  individual  he  most  desires,  what  his  selfish  nature  urges 
him  to,  and  what  self-sacrifices  he  is  willing  to  make  in 
this  circumstance  or  that.  We  endeavour  to  reach  a  theory 
of  '  value '  based  on  a  calculus  of  the  desire  of  one  individual 
to  gratify  his  individual  wants,  multiplied  into  the  number 
of  such  individuals.  Or  we  take  a  group  of  individuals 
together  as  we  find  them  in  society  and  ask  how  it  is  that 
these  individuals  could  have  come  together.  All  this  with- 
out so  much  as  consulting  the  single  person  psychologi- 
cally as  to  the  view  he  has  of  his  own  social  life,  his 
opportunities,  and  his  obligations  !  The  average  individual 
would  be  '  scared  '  within  an  inch  of  his  life  if  he  were  for  a 
moment  obliged  to  put  up  with  the  kind  of  existence  which 


14  The  Self-conscious  Person 

such  theorists  assume  him  to  live  ;  and  he  would  be  para- 
lyzed into  permanent  inertia  if  he  had  to  effect  by  his 
conscious  efforts  what  they  teach  us  he  works  out.  Even 
the  later  psychological  sociologists,  as  notably  M.  Tarde, 
treat '  beliefs '  and  '  desires  '  as  ultimate  self-existent  things 
apart  from  the  content  of  thought  to  which  they  are  func- 
tionally attached. 

4.  To  bring  our  development  of  the  sense  of  personal- 
ity, therefore,  into  view  of  these  questions,  let  us  inquire 
briefly  into  one  of  the  main  points  in  the  theory  of  society 
which  recent  discussion  has  tended  to  formulate.  This 
point  is  that  which  concerns  the  '  interests '  of  the  individ- 
ual. What  are  the  interests  of  the  individual,  and  how 
do  they  stand  related  to  the  interests  of  the  community, 
state,  social  group,  in  which  the  individual  lives  ? 1 

Popularly,  a  man's  interests  are  those  aspects  of  possib^ 
fortune  which  are  best  for  him.  What  is  thus  best  for 
him  is  in  the  main  what  he  wants;  but  the  two  classes 
are  not  always  identical.  Yet  for  the  sake  of  making  our 
point  more  plain  in  the  sequel,  suppose  we  begin  by  defin- 
ing a  man's  interest  as  that  which  he  wants,  and  is  willing 
to  put  forth  some  endeavour  to  obtain.  Then  let  us  see 
how  this  tends  to  involve  the  man's  self,  and  the  selves  of 
those  who  are  associated  with  him. 

If  the  analysis  given  above  be  true,  then  what  a  man 
thinks  of  as  himself,  is  in  large  measure  identical  with  what 
he  thinks  of  as  another,  or  the  others  in  general.  So  the 
ejecting  of  the  thought  of  '  person,'  which,  when  looked  at 

1  This  discussion  of  •  Interests,'  which  has  already  been  printed  (Monist, 
April,  1897),  is  inserted  here  to  illustrate  the  general  application  of  the  topic  in 
social  theory.     It  may  be  turned  to  again  when  the  reader  has  read  the  chap- 
•  Suction '    I V 


The  Person  as  a  Self  15 

subjectively,  he  calls  'myself,'  into  'another,'  —  this  quali- 
fies that  other  to  be  clothed  on  with  all  the  further  predi- 
cates found  to  attach  to  the  self.  The  so-called  love  of 
self,  it  is  evident,  is  such  a  predicate ;  it  is  a  description 
of  the  attitude  which  the  man  takes  to  himself ;  a  sort  of 
reaction  of  part  of  his  nature  upon  another  part.  When 
he  is  proud,  it  is  because  the  qualities  by  which  he  repre- 
sents himself  to  himself  are  such  that  they  arouse  his 
approbation.  When  he  thinks,  therefore,  of  the  other  in 
terms  of  the  same  predicates,  he  has  to  react,  in  some 
degree,  with  the  same  sense  of  approval. 

When,  likewise,  I  go  farther  in  thought  and  say,  "being 
such  and  such  a  person,  it  is  my  interest  to  have  such 
or  such  a  fate,"  I  must  perforce  —  that  is,  by  the  very  same 
mental  movement  which  gives  the  outcome  in  my  own 
case  —  attribute  to  the  other  the  same  deserts  and  the 
same  fate.  Viewed  psychologically,  we  should  say  that  the 
predicate  is  a  function  of  the  content  which  we  call  self, 
and  that,  so  far  as  the  content  is  the  same,  the  predicate 
must  be  the  same.  But  this  sense  of  equal  interest,  desert, 
because  of  identical  position  in  the  evolution  of  selves, 
what  is  this  but,  in  the  abstract,  the  sense  of  justice,  and 
in  the  concrete,  the  feeling  of  sympathy  with  the  other  ? 
The  very  concept  of  interests,  when  one  considers  it  with 
reference  to  himself,  necessarily  involves  others,  therefore, 
on  very  much  the  same  footing  as  oneself.  One's  inter- 
ests, the  things  he  wants  in  life,  are  the  things  which,  by 
the  very  same  thought,  he  allows  others,  also,  the  right 
to  want ;  and  if  he  insists  upon  the  gratification  of  his 
own  wants  at  the  expense  of  the  legitimate  wants  of  the 
'  other,'  then  he  in  so  far  does  violence  to  his  sympathies 
and  to  his  sense  of  justice.  And  this  in  turn  must  impair 


1 6  The  Self-conscious  Person 

his  satisfaction.  For  the  very  gratification  of  himself  thus 
secured  must,  if  it  be  accompanied  with  any  reflection  at 
all,  involve  the  sense  of  the  other's  gratification  also ;  and 
since  this  conflicts  with  the  fact,  a  degree  of  discomfort 
must  normally  arise  in  mind  varying  with  the  develop- 
ment which  the  self  has  attained  in  the  dialectical  process 
described  above. 

5.  Or  suppose  we  look  at  the  case  a  little  differently. 
Let  us  say  that  the  sense  of  self  always  involves  the  sense 
of  the  other.     And  this  sense  of  the  other  is  but  that  of 
another  '  self,'  where  the  word  '  self '  is  equivalent  to  myself, 
and  the  meaning  of  the  word  '  other '  is  that  which  prevents 
it  from  being  myself.     Now  my  point  is  that  whatever  I 
fancy,  hope,  fear,  desire  for  self  in  general,  with  no  quali- 
fication as  to  which  self  it  is,  remains  the  same  whether 
afterwards  I  do  qualify  it  by  the  word  '  my '  or  by  the  word 
'your.'     Psychologically  there  is  a  great   mass  of   motor 
attitudes  and  reactive  expressions,  felt  in  consciousness  as 
emotion  and  desire,  which  are  common  to  the  self-thought 
everywhere. 

6.  This  is  true  just  in  so  far  as  there  is  a  certain  typical 
other  self  whose  relation  to  me  has  been  that  of  the  give- 
and-take  by  which  the  whole  development  of  a  sense  of 
self  of  any  kind  has  been  made   possible.     And  we  find 
certain  distinctions  at  different  stages  of  the  development 
which  serve  to  throw  the  general  idea  of  the  social  relation- 
ship into  clearer  light. 

Let  us  look  at  the  life  of  the  child  with  especial  refer- 
ence to  his  attitudes  to  those  around  him  ;  taking  the 
most  common  case,  that  of  a  child  in  a  family  of  children. 
We  find  that  such  a  child  shows,  in  the  very  first  stages 
of  bis  sense  of  himself  as  a  being  of  rights,  duties,  etc.,  a 


The  Person  as  a  Self  I  7 

very  imitative  nature.  He  is  mainly  occupied  with  the 
business  of  learning  about  himself,  other  people,  and  nat- 
ure. He  imitates  everything,  being  a  veritable  copying- 
machine.  He  spends  the  time  not  given  to  imitating 
others  very  largely  in  practising  in  his  games  what  he  has 
picked  up  by  his  imitations,  and  in  the  exploiting  of  these 
accomplishments.  His  two  dominating  characteristics  are 
a  certain  slavishness,  on  the  one  hand,  in  following  all 
examples  set  around  him ;  and  then,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  certain  bold  aggressiveness,  inventiveness,  a  showing- 
off,  in  the  use  he  makes  of  the  things  he  learns. 

But  it  does  not  take  very  extended  observation  to  con- 
vince us  that  this  difference  in  his  attitudes  is  not  a  con- 
tradiction :  that  the  attitudes  themselves  really  terminate 
upon  different  thoughts  of  self.  The  child  imitates  his 
elders,  not  from  choice,  but  from  his  need  of  adaptation 
to  the  social  environment ;  for  it  is  his  elders  who  know 
more  than  he  does,  and  who  act  in  more  complex  ways. 
But  he  is  less  often  aggressive  toward  his  elders  ;  that  is, 
toward  those  who  have  the  character  of  command,  direc- 
tion, and  authority  over  him.  His  aggressions  are  directed 
mainly  toward  his  brothers  and  sisters ;  and  even  as 
toward  them,  he  shows  very  striking  discriminative  selec- 
tion of  those  upon  whom  it  is  safe  to  aggress.  In  short, 
it  is  plain  that  the  difference  in  attitude  really  indicates 
differences  in  his  thought,  corresponding  to  differences  in 
the  elements  of  the  child's  social  environment.  We  may 
suppose  the  persons  about  him  divided  roughly  into  two 
classes :  those  from  whom  he  learns,  and  those  on  whom 
he  practises ;  and  then  we  see  that  his  actions  are  ac- 
counted for  as  adaptations  toward  these,  in  his  personal 
development. 


jg  T/tt-  Self-conscious  Person 

The  facts  covered  by  this  distinction  —  probably  the 
first  social  distinction  in  the  child's  career  — are 

very  interesting.  The  stern  father  of  the  family  is  at  the 
extreme  end  of  the  class  he  reveres  with  a  shading  of  fear. 
The  little  brother  and  sister  stand  at  the  other  extreme ; 
they  are  the  fitting  instruments  of  his  aggression,  the 
practice  of  his  strength,  the  assertion  of  his  agency  and 
importance.  The  mother  usually  stands  midway,  it  seems, 
serving  to  unite  the  two  aspects  of  personality  in  the 
youngster's  mind.  And  it  is  pretty  clear,  when  the  case 
is  closely  studied,  that  the  child  has,  as  it  were,  two 
thoughts  of  his  mother  —  two  mothers,  according  as  she 
on  occasion  falls  into  one  or  the  other  of  these  classes. 
!!<•  k-.unx  when,  in  what  circumstances,  she  will  suffer 
him  to  assert  himself,  and  when  she  will  require  him  to  be 
docile  and  teachable.  And  although  she  is  for  the  most 
part  a  teacher  and  example,  yet  on  occasion  he  takes  liber- 
>vith  the  teacher. 

Now  what  does  this  mean,  this  sorting  out,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  persons  of  the  family  ?  It  means  a  great  deal  when 
looked  at  in  the  light  of  the  '  dialectical  movement '  in  the 
development  of  personality.  And  I  may  state  my  inter- 
pretation of  it  at  the  outset. 

7.  The  child's  sense  of  himself  is,  as  we  have  seen,  one 
pole  of  a  relation  ;  and  which  pole  it  is  to  be,  depends  on 
the  particular  relation  which  the  other  pole,  over  which 
the  child  has  no  control,  calls  on  it  to  be.  If  the  other 
person  involved  presents  uncertain,  ominous,  dominating, 
instructive  features,  or  novel  imitative  features,  then  the 
self  is  '  subject '  over  against  what  is  '  projective.'  He  recog- 
nizes new  elements  of  personal  suggestion  not  yet  accom- 
modated to.  His  consciousness  is  jn  the  learning  attitude  ; 


The  Person  as  a  Self  19 

he  imitates,  he  serves,  he  trembles,  he  is  a  slave.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  there  are  persons  to  whom  his  attitude 
has  a  right  to  be  different.  In  the  case  of  these  the  dia- 
lectic has  gone  further.  He  has  mastered  all  their  features, 
he  can  do  himself  what  they  do,  he  anticipates  no  new 
developments  in  his  intercourse  with  them;  so  he  'ejects' 
them,  as  the  psychological  expression  is  :  for  an  '  eject '  is  a 
person  whose  consciousness  has  only  those  elements  in  it 
which  the  individual  who  thinks  of  that  consciousness  is 
able,  out  of  his  own  store  of  experience,  to  read  into  it. 
It  is  ejective  to  him,  for  he  makes  it  what  he  will,  in  a 
sense.  Now  this  is  what  the  brothers  and  sisters,  notably 
the  younger  ones,  are  to  our  youthful  hero.  They  are  his 
'ejects';  he  knows  them  by  heart,  they  have  no  thoughts, 
they  do  no  deeds,  which  he  could  not  have  read  into  them 
by  anticipation.  So  he  despises  them,  practises  his  supe- 
rior activities  on  them,  tramples  them  under  foot. 

8.  Now  at  this  earliest  stage  in  his  unconscious  classifi- 
cation of  the  elements  of  his  personal  world,  it  is  clear 
that  any  attempt  to  describe  the  child's  interests  —  the 
things  which  he  wants,  as  we  have  agreed  to  define 
'interests'  —  as  selfish,  generous,  or  as  falling  in  any  cate- 
gory of  developed  social  significance,  is  quite  beside  the 
mark.  If  we  say  that  to  be  selfish  is  to  try  to  get  all  the 
personal  gratification  possible,  we  find  that  he  does  this 
only  part  of  the  time  ;  and  even  on  these  occasions,  not 
because  he  has  any  conscious  preference  for  that  style  of 
conduct,  but  merely  because  his  consciousness  is  then 
filled  with  the  particular  forms  of  personal  relationship  — 
the  presence  of  his  little  sister,  etc.  —  which  normally 
issue  in  the  more  habitual  actions  which  are  termed 
'  aggressive  '  in  our  social  terminology.  His  action  is  only 


2O  Tlie  Self-conscious  Person 

the  motor  side  of  a  certain  collection  of  elements.  He 
acts  that  way,  then,  simply  because  it  is  natural  for  him 
to  practise  the  functions  which  he  has  found  useful.  We 
see  that  it  is  natural  ;  and  on  the  basis  of  its  naturalness, 
we  are  prone  to  call  him  selfish  by  nature.1 

But  that  this  is  arguing  beyond  our  facts  —  really  argu- 
ing on  the  strength  of  the  psychological  ignorance  of  our 
hearers,  and  our  own  —  is  clear  when  we  turn  the  child 
about  and  bring  him  into  the  presence  of  the  other  class 
of  persons  to  whom  we  have  seen  him  taking  up  a  special 
attitude.  We  have  but  to  observe  him  in  the  presence  of 
his  father,  usually,  or  of  some  one  else  whom  he  habit- 
ually imitates  and  from  whom  he  learns  the  lessons  of  life, 
to  find  out  that  he  is  just  as  pre-eminently  social,  docile, 
accommodating,  centred-outvvardly,  so  to  speak,  as  before 
we  considered  him  unsocial,  aggressive,  and  self-centred. 
If  we  saw  him  only  in  these  latter  circumstances,  we 
should  say  possibly  that  he  was  by  nature  altruistic,  most 
responsive  to  generous  suggestion,  teachable  in  the  ex- 
treme. But  here  the  limitation  is  the  same  as  in  the  for- 
mer case.  He  is  not  altruistic  in  any  high  social  sense, 
nor  consciously  yielding  to  suggestions  of  response  which 
require  the  repression  of  his  selfishness.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  is  simply  acting  himself  out ;  and  in  just  the  same 
natural  way  as  on  the  occasion  of  his  apparent  selfishness. 
But  it  is  now  a  different  self  which  is  acting  itself  out. 
The  self  is  now  at  the  receptive  pole.  It  is  made  up  of 
elements  which  are  inadequate  to  a  translation  of  the  alter 
at  the  other  pole  of  the  relationship  now  established. 

1  A  good  instance  of  this  inadequacy  of  statement  from  a  psychological 
point  of  view,  is  seen  in  Professor  J.  Sully's  grave  discussion  as  to  whether 
infants  are  naturally  immoral  or  nut  (Studies  of  Childhood,  Chap.  VII.). 


The  Person  as  a  Self  21 

The  child's  sense  of  self  is  now  not  that  of  a  relatively 
completed  self  in  relation  to  the  alter  before  him ;  it 
was  that  in  the  earlier  case,  and  the  aggression  of  which 
he  was  then  guilty  showed  as  much.  Now  he  feels  his 
lack  of  adequate  means  of  response  to  the  personality 
before  him.  He  cannot  anticipate  what  the  father  will 
do  next,  how  long  approbation  will  smile  upon  him,  what 
the  reasons  are  for  the  changes  in  the  alter-personality. 
So  it  is  but  to  state  a  psychological  truism  to  say  that  his 
conduct  will  be  different  in  this  case.  Yet  from  the  fact 
that  the  self  of  this  social  state  is  also  in  a  measure  a 
regular  pole  of  the  dialectic  of  personal  growth,  it  often 
tempts  the  observer  to  classify  the  whole  child,  on  the 
strength  of  this  one  attitude,  in  some  one  category  of 
social  and  political  description. 

9.  I  do  not  see,  in  short,  how  the  personality  of  this 
child  can  be  expressed  in  any  but  social  terms ;  nor  how, 
on  the  other  hand,  social  terms  can  get  any  content  of 
value  but  from  the  understanding  of  the  developing 
individual.  This  is  a  circle  of  definition,  of  course ;  and 
that  is  just  my  point.  On  the  one  hand,  we  can  get  no 
doctrine  of  society  but  by  getting  the  psychology  of  the 
'socius'  with  all  his  natural  history ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
we  can  get  no  true  view  of  the  'socius'  at  any  time  without 
describing  the  social  conditions  under  which  he  normally 
lives,  with  the  history  of  their  action  and  reaction  upon 
him.  Or  to  put  the  outcome  in  the  terms  of  the  restric- 
tion which  we  have  imposed  upon  ourselves,  —  the  only 
way  to  get  a  solid  basis  for  social  theory  based  upon 
human  want  or  desire,  is  to  work  out  first  a  descriptive 
and  genetic  psychology  of  desire  in  its  social  aspects ;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  the  only  way  to  get  an  adequate  psy- 


22  The  Self-conscious  Person 

chological  view  of  the  rise  and  development  of  desire  in 
its  social  aspects,  is  by  a  patient  tracing  of  the  conditions 
of  social  environment  in  which  the  child  and  the  race 
have  lived  and  which  they  have  grown  up  to  reflect. 

10.  But  the  observation  of  the  child  shows  us  that  we 
may  carry  our  discrimination  of  his  personal  attitudes  far- 
ther along  the  same  lines.  We  have  found  him  classifying 
his  companions  and  associates  by  the  shadings  of  con- 
duct which  his  spontaneous  adaptations  of  himself  show; 
yielding  to  some  and  studying  them  mainly  by  imitation, 
abusing  others  and  asserting  himself  against  them  aggres- 
sively. This  distinction  gets  a  wider  development  as  his 
experience  goes  on  accumulating.  As  was  hinted  in  the 
case  of  his  attitude  to  his  mother,  one  person  may  come 
to  have  for  him  the  force  of  several,  or  of  both  of  the  two 
great  classes  of  persons.  Sometimes  he  tyrannizes  over 
his  mother  and  finds  her  helpless ;  at  other  times  he  finds 
her  far  from  submitting  to  tyranny,  and  then  he  takes 
the  r61e  of  learner  and  obedient  boy.  Now  the  further 
advance  which  he  makes  in  the  general  sense  of  the  social 
situation  as  a  whole,  is  in  the  line  of  carrying  the  same 
adaptability  of  attitude  into  his  relation  to  each  of  the 
persons  whom  he  knows.  Just  as  he  himself  is  sometimes 
one  person  and  again  another,  sometimes  the  learner,  the 
altruist,  the  unselfish  pupil,  and  then  again  the  egoist,  the 
selfish  aggressor ;  so  he  continues  the  dialectical  process 
by  making  this  also  'ejective'  to  him.  He  reads  the  same 
possibility  of  personal  variation  back  into  the  alter  also. 
He  comes  to  say  to  himself  in  effect :  he,  my  father,  has 
his  moods  just  as  I  have.  He,  no  less  than  I,  cannot 
be  adequately  considered  all-suffering  or  all-conquering. 
Sometimes  he  also  is  at  one  pole  of  the  self-dialectic, 


The  Person  as  a  Self  23 

sometimes  at  the  other.  And  so  is  my  mother,  and  my 
brother  and  sister,  as  they  grow  older,  —  indeed,  so  are 
all  men. 

So  it  then  becomes  his  business  not  to  classify  persons, 
but  to  classify  actions.  He  sees  that  any  person  may, 
with  some  few  exceptions,  act  in  either  way :  any  person 
may  be  his  teacher  or  his  slave,  on  occasion.  So  his  next 
step  in  social  adaptation  is  his  adaptation  to  occasions ;  to 
the  groups  of  social  conditions  in  which  one  or  the  other 
class  of  actions  may  be  anticipated  from  people  generally. 
And  he  makes  great  rough  classes  in  which  to  put  his 
'  ejects '  -  —  the  read-out  personalities  about  him  —  accord- 
ing to  his  expectations  of  treatment  from  them.  He  learns 
the  signs  of  wrath,  of  good  humour,  of  sorrow ;  of  joy, 
hope,  love,  jealousy ;  giving  them  the  added  interpretation 
all  the  time  which  his  own  imitation  of  them  enables  him 
to  make  by  realizing  what  they  mean  in  his  own  experi- 
ence. And  so  he  gets  himself  equipped  with  that  extraor- 
dinary facility  of  transition  from  one  attitude  to  another 
in  his  responses  to  those  about  him,  which  all  who  are 
familiar  with  children  will  have  remarked. 

ii.  Now  all  these  changes  have  meaning  only  as  we 
realize  the  fact  of  the  social  dialectic,  which  is  the  same 
through  it  all.  There  are  changes  of  attitude  simply  and 
only  because,  as  the  psychologist  would  express  it,  there 
are  changes  in  the  content  of  his  sense  of  self.  In  more 
popular  terms :  he  changes  his  attitude  in  each  case  be- 
cause the  thing  called  another,  the  alter,  changes.  His 
father  is  his  object ;  and  the  object  is  the  'father,'  as  the 
child  thinks  him,  on  this  occasion  and  under  these  circum- 
stances, right  out  of  his  own  consciousness.  The  father- 
thought  is  a  part  of  the  child's  present  social  situation ; 


24  The  Self -conscious  Person 

and  this  situation  in  the  child's  mind  issues  in  the  attitude 
which  is  appropriate  to  it.  If  it  be  the  father  in  wrath, 
the  situation  produces  such  a  father  out  of  the  child's 
available  social  thought-material ;  and  the  presence  of  the 
combination  in  the  child's  mind  itself  issues  in  the  docile, 
fearful  attitude.  But  if  it  then  turn  into  the  jovial  father, 
the  child  does  not  then  himself  set  about  reversing  his 
attitude.  No,  the  father-thought  is  now  a  different  father- 
thought,  and  of  itself  issues  in  the  child's  attitude  of  play- 
ful aggression,  rebellion,  or  disobedience.  The  growing 
child  is  able  to  think  of  self  in  varying  terms  as  varying 
social  situations  impress  themselves  upon  him  ;  so  these 
varying  thoughts  of  self,  when  made  real  in  the  persons  of 
others,  call  out,  by  the  regular  process  of  motor  discharge, 
each  its  own  appropriate  attitude. 

But  see,  in  this  more  subtle  give-and-take  of  elements 
for  the  building  up  of  the  social  sense,  how  inextricably 
interwoven  the  ego  and  the  alter  really  are!  The  develop- 
ment of  the  child's  personality  could  not  go  on  at  all  with- 
out the  constant  modification  of  his  sense  of  himself  by 
suggestions  from  others.  So  he  himself,  at  every  stage, 
is  really  in  part  some  one  else,  even  in  his  own  thought 
of  himself.  And  then  the  attempt  to  get  the  alter  stript 
from  elements  contributed  directly  from  his  present 
thought  of  himself  is  equally  futile.  He  thinks  of  the 
other,  the  alter,  as  his  socins,  just  as  he  thinks  of  himself 
as  the  other's  socius :  and  the  only  thing  that  remains 
more  or  less  stable,  throughout  the  whole  growth,  is  the 
fact  that  there  is  a  growing  sense  of  self  which  includes 
both  terms,  the  ego  and  the  alter. 

In  short,  the  real  self  is  the  bipolar  self,  the  social  self, 
the  socius. 


The  Person  as  a  Self  25 

12.  If  we  think  it  worth  while  again  to  raise  the 
question  as  to  what  such  a  self  pursues  when,  as  we  say, 
he  identifies  his  interests  with  his  wants,  the  answer  is 
just  as  before.  The  growing  subtlety  of  the  dialectical 
process  has  not  changed  the  values  which  the  elements 
represent  to  the  child.  What  he  wants  in  each  circum- 
stance is  expressed  by  his  attitude  in  that  circumstance. 
'It  changes  with  change  of  circumstance.  He  is  now  a 
creature  of  burning  self-assertion,  eager  to  'kill  and  destroy 
in  all  God's  holy  mountain' ;  and  presto  !  change,  he  is  now 
the  'lion  lying  down  beside  the  lamb.'  His  wants  are  not 
at  all  consistent.  They  are  in  every  case  the  outcome  of 
the  social  situation  ;  and  it  is  absurd  to  endeavour  to  express 
the  entire  body  of  his  wants  as  a  fixed  quantity  under  such 
a  term  of  description  as  'selfish,'  or  'generous,'  or  other, 
which  has  reference  to  one  class  only  of  the  varied  situa- 
tions of  his  life. 

So  far,  therefore,  in  our  search  for  a  definition  of  the 
interests  of  the  individual,  in  relation  to  his  social  envi- 
ronment, we  find  a  certain  outcome.  His  wants  are  a 
function  of  the  social  situation  as  a  whole.  The  social 
influences  which  are  working  in  upon  him  are  potent  to 
modify  his  wants,  no  less  than  are  the  innate  tendencies 
of  his  personal  nature  to  issue  in  such  wants.  The  char- 
acter which  he  shows  actively  at  any  time  is  due  to  these 
two  factors  in  union.  One  of  them  is  no  more  himself 
than  the  other.  He  is  the  outcome  of  '  habit '  and  '  sug- 
gestion,' as  psychology  would  say  in  its  desire  to  express 
everything  by  single  words.  Social  suggestion  is  the  sum 
of  the  social  influences  which  he  takes  in  and  incorporates 
in  himself  when  he  is  in  the  receptive,  imitative,  attitude 


26  The  Self-conscious  Person 

to  the  alter;1  habit  is  the  body  of  formed  material,  already 
cast  in  the  mould  of  a  self,  which  he  brings  up  for  self- 
assertion  and  aggression,  when  he  stands  at  the  other  pole 
of  the  relation  to  the  alter,  and  exhibits  himself  as  a  bully, 
a  tyrant,  or  at  least,  as  master  of  his  own  conduct.  Of 
course  his  personal  hereditary  characteristics  are  on  this 
latter  side  in  so  far  as  they  are  of  an  anti-social  sort.  And 
the  social  unit  of  desire,  as  far  as  the  individual  is  taken 
as  the  measure  of  it,  in  any  society,  is  the  individual's  rela- 
tively fixed  conduct,  considered  as  reflecting  his  interpre- 
tation of  the  current  social  modes  of  life. 

13.  It  is  easy  to  discern  in  the  behaviour  of  the  child, 
from  about  five  years  old,  the  blending  of  these  two  in- 
fluences. Two  children  in  the  same  family  may  differ 
possibly  by  all  the  width  of  the  distinction  current  in 
psychology  by  the  terms  'sensory  versus  motor'  in  their 
types  or  dispositions ;  and  yet  we  may  see  in  them  the 
influence  of  the  common  environment.  One  acts  at  once 
on  the  example  of  the  father ;  the  other  reflects  upon  it, 
seems  to  understand  it,  and  then  finally  acts  upon  what 
he  thinks  it  means.  The  motor  child  learns  by  acting; 
the  sensory  child  learns  and  tests  his  learning  by  subse- 
quent action.  But  both  end  by  getting  the  father's  essen- 
tial conduct  learned.  Both  modify  the  thought  of  self  by 
the  new  elements  drawn  from  the  father ;  and  act  out  the 
new  self  thus  created  ;  but  each  shows  the  elements  dif- 
ferently interpreted  in  a  synthesis  with  the  character 
which  he  already  had. 

Or  take  the  same  process  of  incorporating  elements  of 

1  Guyau  makes  the  interesting  remark  that  even  though  we  were  purely 
egoistic  we  should  still  learn  to  love,  simply  through  response  to  the  appear- 
ance of  love  in  others. 


The  Person  as  a  Self  27 

social  suggestion  as  they  are  absorbed  respectively  by  a 
boy  and  a  girl  of  about  the  same  age.  The  difference 
of  sex  is  a  real  and  fundamental  difference,  on  the  side  of 
what  is  called  'endowment ' ;  so  we  should  expect  that  the 
same  social  suggestions  given  the  two  would  be  taken  up 
differently  by  them,  and  show  different  interpretations 
when  the  child  of  one  sex  or  the  other  comes  to  act  upon 
them.  The  boy  is  generally  more  aggressive,  more  prone 
to  fall  into  the  self-pole  of  high  confidence  in  his  own  abil- 
ities. We  find  him  refusing  certain  forms  of  suggestion  — 
say  those  coming  from  a  female  nurse  —  which  the  little 
girl  readily  responds  to.  Furthermore,  the  boy  is  capa- 
ble, just  for  the  same  reason,  of  standing  up  to  the 
rougher  elements  of  his  social  milieu  which  only  frighten 
and  paralyze  his  sister.  And  when  the  same  suggestion 
is  given  to  the  boy  and  girl  together,  the  former  is  likely 
to  use  it  wherewith  to  exercise  himself  upon  animals,  etc., 
while  the  girl  is  more  likely  to  use  the  new  act  strictly  in 
an  imitative  way,  repeating  the  actual  conduct  of  others.1 

But  apart  from  the  attempt  to  reduce  the  forms  of 
active  interpretation  to  general  classes,  it  is  enough  here 
to  point  out  the  extraordinary  variety  which  the  same 
suggestions  take  on  in  the  active  interpretations  by  differ- 
ent children ;  and  to  point  out  with  it  the  need  of  recog- 
nizing the  fact  that  in  this  interpretation  by  the  child 
there  is  always  the  fusion  of  the  old  self  with  the  new 
elements  coming  in  from  the  selves  external  to  it.  Every 
conscious  interpretation  of  human  action  is,  I  think,  essen- 
tially of  this  kind.  We  think  the  deeds  of  others  as  we 
bring  ourselves  up  to  the  performance  of  similar  deeds ; 

1  Of  course,  we  can  only  say '  more  likely '  in  any  single  instance,  and  in  the 
Other  distinctions  betsveen  boys  and  girls  as  well. 


28  The  Self-conscious  J'crson 

and  we  do  the  deeds  of  others  only  as  we  ourselves  are 
able  to  think  them.  In  the  case  of  the  young  child  in 
the  family,  we  may  often  tell  how  far  he  is  learning  cor- 
rectly ;  also  the  particular  alter  from  whom  he  has  taken 
his  lesson.  But  in  the  larger  social  whole  of  adult  life 
both  elements  are  so  complex  —  the  solidified  self  of  the 
individual's  history  is  so  fixed,  and  the  social  suggestions 
of  the  community  are  so  varied  and  conflicting  —  that 
the  outcome  of  the  fusion,  in  a  particular  instance,  is  a 
thing  which  no  man  can  prophesy. 

14.  So  much  for  the  individual  child  and  his  growing 
social  personality.  We  see  in  a  measure  what  his  inter- 
ests are ;  that  is,  what  elements  go  to  make  his  interests 
up.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the  rest  of  the  family  in  which 
he  lives  and  briefly  state  the  same  inquiry  in  respect  to 
them,  thus  carrying  one  step  further  the  growth  of  the 
social  self. 

Waiving  the  inquiry  into  the  interests  of  the  family 
group  as  a  whole,  that  is,  the  question  of  objective  inter- 
ests apart  from  actual  want  or  desire  (as  we  did  in  the 
earlier  case),  our  question  is  now  about  this  :  What  can  be 
said  of  the  wants  of  the  other  individuals  of  the  family  in 
which  the  young  hero,  whose  life  we  have  so  far  described, 
and  exploits  himself?  This  seems  to  be  answered, 
certainly  in  part,  by  the  consideration  that  they  have  each 
been  through  the  same  process  of  growth  in  securing  the 
notion  of  self,  both  the  ego-self  and  the  alter-self,  that  he 
ich  has  been  a  child.  Each  has  imitated  some 
persons  and  assaulted  others.  So,  of  course,  of  the  other 
children  in  the  family  ;  for  they  are  the  very  specimens 
of  the  alter  which  have  furnished  to  the  hero  his  'socii* 
all  the  way  through.  So  we  have  only  to  make  them  one 


The  Person  as  a  Self  29 

by  one  hero  in  turn  to  see  that  then  all  the  others  be- 
come 'socii';  and  the  group  development  replaces  the  in- 
dividual development.  Even  the  parents  are  in  great 
measure  capable  of  the  same  interpretation ;  since  they 
have  furnished  the  largest  amount  of  personal  suggestion 
to  all  the  children  :  and  the  children,  in  imitating  one 
another,  aggressing  upon  one  another,  etc.,  are  really 
perpetuating  the  features  of  social  life  which  characterize 
the  parents'  lives.  No  family,  of  course,  lives  in  such  iso- 
lation as  to  be  in  any  sense  obliged  to  support  itself  upon 
its  own  social  stock  from  one  generation  to  another;  and 
there  is  the  further  modifying  influence  spoken  of  above 
of  the  peculiar  interpretations  given  to  his  social  sug- 
gestions by  each  child.1  But  apart  from  the  personal 
form  in  which  the  family  suggestions  are  worked  over 
by  each  child,  we  may  say  that  the  material  of  the  social 
life  of  the  family  is  largely  common  stock  for  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family. 

This  means  that  the  alter  to  each  ego  is  largely  common 
to  them  all ;  and  that  what  has  been  said  of  the  wants  of 
the  ego  being  not  egoistic  in  the  selfish  sense,  nor  gener- 
ous in  the  altruistic  sense,  but  general  in  the  social  sense, 
holds  of  the  family  group  as  a  whole.  What  each  child 
wants  for  himself,  he  wants  more  or  less  consciously  for 
each  member  of  his  family.  While  he  may  assault  his 
brother,  viewing  him  as  an  alter  to  practise  on  in  certain 
circumstances,  how  soon  he  turns  in  his  defence  in  the 
presence  of  the  alter  foreign  to  them  both,  when  the  larger 
social  ego  of  both  swells  within  his  breast !  What  boy 
among  boys,  what  school-fellow  among  his  companions, 

1  The  degree  of '  originality,'  or  '  invention,'  which  each  child  shows. 


30  The  Self-conscious  Person 

what  Rob  Roy  surrounded  by  the  clan  has  not  felt  the 
socius,  the  common  self  of  the  group,  come  in  to  drive  out 
the  narrower  ego  of  his  relatively  private  life  within  the 
group  ?  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  interests  of  the  group 
may  not  be  more  clearly  seen  by  one  member  than  by 
others,  nor  that  direct  conflicts  may  not  arise  in  which 
some  one  ego  will  refuse  to  yield  to  the  demands  of  the 
socius  of  the  group.  Those  things  may  well  be,  and  are. 
To  say  the  contrary  would  be  to  say  that  the  development 
of  all  the  individuals  was  equal.  For  if  each  has  his  ego 
and  his  alter  only  by  the  assimilation  of  suggestions,  then 
the  amount  of  assimilation,  of  progressive  learning  of  the 
possibilities  and  relationships  of  conduct,  must  indicate 
what  the  sense  of  social  good  is  to  each.  His  insistence 
on  his  interpretation,  however,  is  no  more  egoistic  and 
selfish  than  is  the  insistence  by  the  other  members  of  the 
family  on  a  different  line  of  conduct.  His  double  self, 
giving  the  socius,  may  be  in  advance  of  theirs  or  behind, 
but  it  arises  in  just  the  same  way ;  and  it  is  just  his  social 
nature  which  may  compel  him  to  fight  for  what  seems  to 
be  a  private  and  selfish  interest. 

Apart  from  the  apparent  exceptions  —  not  really  such  — 
now  noted,  we  may  say,  therefore,  that  the  interests  of  the 
family  group  are  reflected  in  the  wants  of  each  member  of 
the  group.  Hatred  of  society,  in  this  primitive  form  of 
society,  is  pathological,  —  if  indeed  it  be  possible.  Nothing 
but  an  upheaval  of  the  foundations  of  personality  can  eradi- 
cate the  sense  of  social  solidarity  in  every  child  in  a  family. 
And  the  ultimate  sanction  for  family  life  and  its  only  per- 
manent safeguard  is  here.  No  legal  provisions  could  have 
originated  the  family,  no  personal  conventions  advanced  it, 
nor  can  it  be  endangered  by  foes  from  without.  Nothing 


The  Person  as  a  Self  31 

but  the  kind  of  suggestion  in  education  which  would  re- 
place the  sort  of  socius  represented  in  the  family,  by 
another  sort,  through  the  same  process  of  identification 
of  the  self  with  its  alter  all  the  way  through  the  history  of 
the  growth  of  personality,  could  affect  it  materially  one 
way  or  the  other.1 

15.  The  family  is,  of  course,  the  first  place  in  which  the 
child  finds  food  for  his  own  personal  assimilation ;  but  he 
does  not  long  limit  himself  to  the  family  diet.  Nor  is  he 
from  his  early  months  entirely  shut  up  to  suggestions  from 
within  the  family  circle.  His  nurse  comes  in  to  stand  as 
a  member  of  his  social  company,  and  often  the  most  im- 
portant member  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  regularity 
and  intimate  character  of  her  ministrations.  She  is  part 
of  the  family  to  all  intents  and  purposes.  And  other 
children  from  abroad  who  come  often  or  at  critical  times 
to  play,  etc.,  are  also  'in  it.'  Then  again  certain  actual 
members  of  the  home  circle  may  see  the  child  so  seldom 
or  in  such  a  passing  way  that  they  practically  are  not,  as 
far  as  the  child's  personal  growth  is  concerned.  So  while 
the  family  is  the  theatre  of  this  first  stage  of  his  growth, 
it  still  represents"  a  rather  flexible  set  of  personal  influences. 

1  Moreover,  it  is  just  this  fact  of  identity  of  personal  and  family  interests 
which  is  responsible  for  the  rise  of  the  family  considered  from  an  evolution 
point  of  view.  Animal  families,  if  they  are  to  survive  as  families,  must  be 
made  up  of  individuals  having  ingrained  in  their  instinctive  life  the  social 
qualities  which  make  the  animal's  own  struggle  for  existence  at  once  also  a 
struggle  for  the  existence  of  the  family  group  as  such;  just  as  the  child,  in  his 
personal  growth,  must  become  a  person  by  becoming  a  socius.  To  separate 
the  two  in  the  child  is  to  annihilate  the  individual  person :  just  so  to  eradicate 
the  family  instinct  in  the  animal  is  to  destroy  his  private  chance  for  survival, 
or  if  not  that,  at  least  to  prevent  the  raising,  and  perhaps  the  very  birth,  of  a 
second  generation.  The  child  in  getting  to  be  a  person  uses  social  means  to 
that  end  in  his  life-history;  and  the  animal  in  getting  to  be  a  species  by  natu- 
ral selection  in  race-history  survives  by  his  use  of  the  same  means. 


32  The  Self-conscious  Person 

And  his  circle  grows  as  he  comes  to  have  other  rela- 
tionships than  those  of  his  immediate  and  domestic  life. 
When  he  begins  to  go  to  the  kindergarten  or  school,  the 
teacher  in  the  first  instance,  then  the  pupils  beside  him 
there,  or  some  of  them,  come  to  bear  on  his  life  in  the 
same  way  that  his  family  companions  do.  So  gradually 
he  widens  out  the  sphere  of  the  exploitation  of  his  two 
selves  —  the  receptive  self,  and  no  less,  the  aggressive  self. 
In  all  the  stretch  of  early  childhood,  pet  animals,  dolls, 
toys,  etc.,  also  play  a  part,  especially  as  giving  him  now 
and  then  a  more  or  less  complete  alter  on  which  to  wreak 
the  performance  of  the  new  acts  recently  learned.  And 
as  he  grows  a  little  older,  and  the  sense  of  personal  agency 
arises  to  play  its  great  part  in  the  development  of  his  ac- 
tivities, all  mechanical  tools,  contrivances,  building-blocks, 
sliced  animals,  etc.,  are  valuable  aids  to  the  exercise  of  his 
understanding  of  the  powers  of  himself  and  of  others. 

In  this  expansion  of  his  interests  —  and  with  it,  his  en- 
larging sense  of  the  sphere  of  personality  realized  in  him- 
self and  in  others,  gradual  as  it  is — we  may  mark  off  certain 
dividing  lines.  We  may  always  say,  no  matter  what  the 
details  of  the  boy's  daily  life  are,  that  there  is  a  circle 
within  which  his  socius  resides,  understanding  socius  as 
we  have  above.  His  socius  —  to  repeat  —  is  the  higher 
sense  of  commonalty,  personal  implication,  mutual  inter- 
est, which  social  intercourse  arouses  in  him.  This  is 
always  alive  when  events  occur  which  involve  persons 
in  a  larger  or  smaller  circumference  drawn  about  him. 
He  has  the  sense  of  a  socius,  for  example,  when  his  own 
school  is  brought  into  rivalry  with  the  school  around  the 
corner.  A  fellow-member  of  his  own  school  may  be 
bullied  in  the  school ;  that  is  an  occurrence  having  only  a 


The  Person  as  a  Self  33 

one-sided  importance  in  the  economy  of  the  school.  The 
bullying  may  be  deserved.  At  any  rate,  his  intra-social 
sense  gives  the  other  and  older  boy  in  the  school  the  right 
to  bully  the  younger,  though  the  younger  be  himself.  He 
is  willing  even  to  'fag'  in  his  own  school.  All  this  is  a 
part  of  the  peculiar  development  which  his  socius  has  had 
in  its  internal  progress.  But  let  the  bullying  be  done  by 
a  boy  from  the  other  school, — however  just  it  be  and 
however  powerless  he  be  to  prevent  it,  —  he  is  in  arms  at 
once.  The  other  school  is  outside  the  circumference  of 
his  present  social  circle. 

But  a  little  later  we  find  that  we  may  draw  a  wider  line. 
Let  him  come  into  some  sort  of  relationship  with  the 
street-boys  who  represent  no  school  at  all ;  and  let  these 
strangers  attempt  to  bully  his  enemies  of  the  other  school 
around  the  corner,  and  observe  how  the  interests  of  the 
rival  school  at  once  become  his  own.  His  general  school- 
socius  is  now  active.  And  it  includes  all  boys  who  go  to 
school.  And  it  would  be  only  a  matter  of  detail  —  inter- 
esting, it  is  true  —  to  follow  our  little  hero  in  the  develop- 
ment of  his  socius  into  the  broader  fields  of  universal 
human  interest ;  that  is,  if  he  be  a  boy  who  ever  does  get 
interests  which  may  be  called  universal. 

That,  however,  may  wait  until  we  are  better  prepared 
to  estimate  those  interests ;  for  the  present,  we  may  try  to 
understand  the  case  in  the  narrower  circles  of  observation. 
And  before  we  pass  from  the  family  circle,  —  before  the 
boy  gets  out  of  his  early  imitative  stage  of  self-develop- 
ment,—  we  find  another  incident  of  his  growth  which  is  to 
him  of  untold  importance.  I  refer  to  the  rise  and  develop- 
ment of  his  ethical  sense.  What  shall  we  say  of  this,  as 
to  its  origin  and  as  to  its  meaning  in  the  social  life  ? 
D 


34  The  Self-conscious  Person 

§  3.    The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self1 

1 6.  Looking  back  over  the  path  we  have  already 
travelled,  we  see  the  two  poles  of  the  dialectic  now 
familiar  to  us,  standing  prominently  out :  the  child  has, 
on  one  hand,  a  self  which  he  ejects  into  the  alter.  This 
is  the  solidified  mass  of  personal  material  which  he  has 
worked  into  a  systematic  whole  by  his  series  of  acts. 
When  he  thinks  of  himself,  this  is  very  largely  what  his 
consciousness  is  filled  with.  Let  us  now  call  this  the  'self 
of  habit,'  or  the  'habitual  self,' — terms  which  are  common 
and  which  carry  their  ordinary  meaning.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  found  that  the  child  has  another  self  : 
the  self  that  learns,  that  imitates,  that  accommodates  to 
new  suggestions  from  persons  in  the  family  and  elsewhere. 
It  is  this  self  that  is  in  part  yet  'projective,'  unfinished, 
constantly  being  modified  by  the  influences  outside,  and, 
in  turn,  passing  the  new  things  learned  over  to  the  self  of 
habit.  Let  us  call  this,  for  reasons  also  evident  from  the 
common  significance  of  the  term,  the  'accommodating 
self.'  Not  that  the  child  has  at  any  time  two  distinct 
thoughts  of  himself  existing  side  by  side, — that  is  not 
true,  —  but  that  his  one  thought  of  self  at  any  time  is  at 
one  or  the  other  pole,  is  a  self  of  habit  or  a  self  of  ac- 
commodation. Which  it  is  to  be,  depends  upon  what  kind 
of  an  alter  is  then  at  the  other  pole.  But  I  trust  this  is 
now  clear. 

It  is  a  further  result  that  if  we  continue  to  ask  at  any 
time  for  a  complete  notion  from  outside  of  that  boy's  self, 
we  cannot  say  that  either  the  self  of  habit  or  the  self  of 

1  The  substance  of  this  paragraph  has  been  printed  in  the  Philosophical 
Review,  May,  1897. 


T/ie  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  35 

accommodation  adequately  expresses  it.  The  only  ade- 
quate expression  of  the  boy  is  that  which  acquaints  us 
with  the  whole  dialectic  of  his  progress,  a  dialectic  which 
comprehends  both  these  selves  and  the  alter  personalities 
which  are  progressive  functions  of  his  thoughts  of  him- 
self ;  that  is,  with  the  self  of  all  the  rich  social  relation- 
ships, or  the  '  socius! 

It  seems  then  a  natural  question  to  ask,  whether  the 
boy  comes  to  have  any  sense  of  just  this  inadequacy  of 
his  thought  of  self  when  he  is  thinking  of  himself  in 
either  way,  either  in  the  way  of  the  habitual  or  of  the 
accommodating  self.  In  other  words,  does  he  go  on  to 
reflect  upon  the  'socius,'  as  a  larger  bond  of  union  to 
the  different  private  thoughts  of  himself  ? *  This  is  really 
the  question  of  the  evolution  of  the  ethical  sense  put  in 
closer  psychological  terms  ;  and  it  may  be  worth  while  to 
see  to  what  ethical  conclusions  this  line  of  distinctions 
would  lead.  This  conclusion  has  been  anticipated  in  the 
following  quotation  from  the  work  already  mentioned.2 

17.  "Whether  obedience  comes  by  suggestion  or  by 
punishment,  it  has  this  genetic  value :  it  leads  to  another 
refinement  in  the  sense  of  self.  .  .  .  The  child  finds 
himself  stimulated  constantly  to  deny  his  impulses,  his 
desires,  even  his  irregular  sympathies,  by  conforming  to 
the  will  of  another.  This  other  represents  a  regular, 
systematic,  unflinching,  but  reasonable  personality  —  still 
a  person,  but  a  very  different  person  from  the  child's 
own.  In  the  analysis  of  'personality  suggestion,'  we 
found  this  stage  of  the  child's  apprehension  of  persons ; 
his  sense  of  the  regularity  of  personal  character  in  the 

1  We  saw  that  he  has  a  sense  of  it,  in  his  esprit-de-corps. 

2  Mental  Development,  pp.  334  f.,  somewhat  revised  and  condensed. 


36  The  Self-conscious  Person 

midst  of  the  capriciousness  that  before  this  stood  out  in 
contrast  to  the  regularity  of  mechanical  movement  in 
things.  There  are  extremes  of  indulgence,  the  child 
learns,  which  even  the  grandmother  does  not  permit  ; 
there  are  extremes  of  severity  from  which  even  the  cruel 
father  draws  back.  Here,  in  this  dawning  sense  of  the 
larger  limits  which  set  barriers  to  personal  freedom,  is 
the  '  copy '  forming  which  is  his  personal  authority,  or 
law.  It  is  '  projective '  because  he  cannot  understand  it, 
cannot  anticipate  it,  cannot  find  it  in  himself.  And  it 
is  only  by  imitation  that  he  is  to  reproduce  it,  and  so 
arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  what  he  is  to  understand  it  to  be. 
So  it  is  a  'copy  for  imitation.'  It  is  its  aim  —  so  may  the 
child  say  to  himself — and  should  be  mine,  if  I  am  awake 
to  it,  to  have  me  obey  it,  act  like  it,  think  like  it,  be 
like  it  in  all  respects.  It  is  not  I,  but  I  am  to  become 
it.  Here  is  my  ideal  self,  my  final  pattern,  my  '  ought ' 
set  before  me.  My  parents  and  teachers  are  good  be- 
cause, with  all  their  differences  from  one  another,  they 
yet  seem  to  be  alike  in  their  acquiescence  in  this  law. 
Only  in  so  far  as  I  get  into  the  habit  of  being  and  doing 
like  them  in  reference  to  it,  get  my  character  moulded 
into  conformity  with  it,  only  so  far  am  I  good.  And 
so,  like  all  other  imitative  functions,  it  teaches  its  lesson 
only  by  stimulating  to  action.  I  must  succeed  in  doing 
—  he  finds  out,  as  he  grows  older  and  begins  to  reflect 
upon  right  and  wrong  —  if  I  would  understand.  But  as  I 
thus  progress  in  doing,  I  forever  find  new  patterns  set 
for  me ;  and  so  my  ethical  insight  must  always  find  its 
profoundest  expression  in  that  yearning  which  anticipates 
but  does  not  overtake  the  ideal. 

"  My  sense  of  moral  ideal,  therefore,  is  my  sense  of  a 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  37 

possible  perfect,  regular  will  taken  over  in  me,  in  which 
the  personal  and  the  social  self  —  my  habits  and  my 
social  calls  —  are  brought  completely  into  harmony ;  the 
sense  of  obligation  in  me,  in  each  case,  is  the  sense  of 
the  actual  discrepancies  in  my  various  thoughts  of  self, 
as  my  actions  and  tendencies  give  rise  to  them."  1 

1 8.  Perhaps  no  more  direct  way  to  bring  home  the 
bearing  of  this  present  line  of  distinctions  can  be  found 
than  to  cite  in  illustration  one  of  the  familiar  social  situa- 
tions which  are  ethically  embarrassing  in  practical  life. 
I  refer  to  the  problem  of  charitable  relief.  The  dilemma 
of  the  benevolent  man  when  a  needy  tramp  comes  to  his 
door  in  a  region  where  there  are  no  organized  agencies 
to  investigate  the  status  of  individuals  of  the  pauper 
class,  —  the  dilemma  brought  upon  him  by  the  prompt- 
ings of  his  sympathy,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  sense  of  his 
duty  to  society  which  only  the  refusal  to  help  the  man 
will  fulfil,  on  the  other  hand, — this  dilemma,  which  on  a 
larger  scale  is  one  of  the  critical  dilemmas  of  all  social 
endeavour,  may  be  translated  directly  into  the  terms  of  our 
psychological  analysis.  We  may  say  that  Mr.  A  has  two 
possible  attitudes  or  courses  of  conduct  before  him.  And 
the  two  are  what  they  are  according  as  he  thinks  of  the 
tramp  in  one  way  or  the  other.  If  he  thinks  of  him  as  an 
unfortunate,  deserving  man,  possibly  hungry,  or  maimed 
beyond  possibility  of  self-support,  then  there  is  an  alter 
which  arouses  his  '  accommodating '  self,  his  sympathetic 
impulses,  his  desire  to  make  an  exception  in  this  case. 

1  The  obligation  side  is  genetically  the  motor  side,  as  readers  of  the  book 
cited  may  possibly  recall,  since,  as  I  believe,  the  sense  of  the  general  is  always 
a  motor  or  attitude  sense.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  develop  this  here.  Cf. 
Sect.  29,  note  2,  and  Sects.  186-188. 


38  The  Self-conscious  Person 

But  when  he  thinks  of  the  man  under  the  ordinary  condi- 
tions of  the  profession  of  'tramping,'  as  a  worthless  creat- 
ure of  drink,  who  will  continue  to  burden  the  community 
and  persuade  others  to  do  the  same,  as  long  as  free  food 
or  lodging  is  given  him,  or  money  without  work,  then  he 
has  before  him  quite  a  different  alter ;  one  that  calls  out 
his  habitual,  aggressive  self.  His  dilemma,  therefore,  is 
really  due  to  the  shifting  of  the  poles  of  his  inner  dialectic. 
Suppose  he  be  a  man  of  benevolence  only,  or  on  the  con- 
trary, a  man  with  no  willingness  to  take  trouble  for  the 
general  good  ;  then  he  acts  at  once  on  the  first  of  the 
thoughts  of  self  —  he  has  no  dilemma.  So,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  he  be  very  rational  in  his  methods  of  thought,  or 
very  much  impressed  with  the  dangers  of  the  tramp 
tribe,  or  very  impecunious  and  willing  to  make  law  a 
cloak  for  private  selfishness  —  in  any  of  these  cases  he 
acts  promptly  in  terms  of  the  habitual  self ;  then  also  he 
finds  no  dilemma.  So  the  very  fact  of  the  embarrassment, 
if  it  arise,  is  witness  to  the//<ry  of  his  various  thoughts  of 
the  tramp, 

But  this,  it  is  clear,  does  not  exhaust  the  statement  of 
the  dilemma.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  whichever  way  he 
decides,  he  is  afterwards  haunted  by  the  fear  that  he 
has  done  wrong.  The  two  thoughts  of  self  still  remain 
clamorous.  And  the  question  comes  up:  Why  is  this  so? 
Why  is  not  the  choice  of  either  course  right  ?  What  is 
the  further  standard,  to  which  he  feels  he  should  appeal, 
to  settle  the  case  justly  ?  To  ask  this  question  is  to  ask 
—  is  it  not?  —  for  a  further  thought  of  self,  one  which 
should  see  clearer,  be  wiser,  do  better  than  either  of 
these  two  which  come  up  to  create  his  dilemma.  Gen- 
erally, indeed,  we  do  quiet  our  apprehensions  in  just  the 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  39 

way  which  the  terms  of  our  psychological  explanations  are 
going  on  to  require ;  we  appeal  to  some  one  else  in  whom 
we  trust  as  having  arrived  at  deeper  insight,  or  better 
information,  of  the  conditions  of  the  social  life  of  the 
neighbourhood,  than  we  have.  He  then,  this  alter,  this 
wise  man,  is  a  further  thought  of  a  self. 

So  we  may  trust  to  this  instance  of  social  embarrass- 
ment —  with  its  sharp  ethical  meaning  in  our  practice  — 
to  show  that  the  question  of  the  further  development  of 
the  sense  of  self,  based,  as  we  said  above,  on  the  conflicts 
of  the  two  earlier  partial  selves,  is  really  one  of  vital 
social  meaning,  and  that,  too,  in  the  ethical  sense. 

19.  Again,  if  we  look  at  the  doctrines  of  the  rise  of  the 
ethical  sense  which  have  become  historical,  we  see  that 
they  commonly  represent  constructions  based  on  the  par- 
tial selves,  described  as  'habitual' and  'accommodating' 
respectively. 

These  historical  doctrines,  we  may  say,  fall  into  two 
classes  : 1  those  which  base  the  ethical  sentiments  upon 
sympathy,  or  some  form  of  social  instinct,  on  the  one 
hand ;  and  those,  on  the  other  hand,  which  base  them 
upon  custom  or  habit.  Let  us  look  a  moment  at  each  of 
these  attempts  to  account  for  the  genesis  of  the  moral 
sentiments,  taking  the  latter  first. 

20.  This  view  seeks  to  account  for  the  sense  in  a  man 
that  he  '  ought '  to  do  a  thing,  by  the  tendency  in  him  to 
feel  that  things  are  going  well  when  he  is  working  along 
the  lines  guaranteed   by  his    past  habits  and  instincts.2 

1  Neglecting  for  the  time  the  third  great  historical  group  of  theories,  which 
may  be  called  '  ideal.' 

2  And,  more  especially,  ill  when  he  violates  them.     See  Darwin's  interest- 
ing case  of  a  supposed  bird,  after  migrating,  feeling  moral  remorse  at  having 


4<D  The  Self-conscious  Person 

What  is  best  for  him  to  do,  is  what  is  right ;  and  what  is 
best  is  that  which  has  been  established  in  the  course  of  his 
life  by  adaptation,  utility,  and  development.  The  sense  of 
right,  therefore,  to  this  view  is  simply  the  consciousness 
of  certain  habits  of  the  physical  or  mental  organization. 
Without  going  into  detail  to  justify  this  brief  characteriza- 
tion of  the  theory  of  the  rise  of  the  ethical  sense  as  held 
by  many  of  the  Association  psychologists,  I  may  state  the 
lack  it  has  in  the  view  of  those  of  other  schools  of  thought 
who  have  criticised  it.  The  lack  is  this :  that  the  theory 
of  habit  does  not  afford  an  adequate  account  of  the  sense 
we  have,  in  our  acutest  ethical  experiences,  that  what  we 
ought  to  do  may  run  counter  to  our  habitual  tendencies. 
On  the  habit  view,  only  that  kind  of  action  would  get  the 
right  to  have  ethical  approval  attached  to  it  which  was  so 
prevalent  and  regular  in  the  normal  life  of  the  individual 
as  to  be  reflected  in  his  every-day  conduct.  But  the  oft- 
recurring"  antithesis  in  practice,  no  less  than  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  same  antithesis  in  ethical  theory  —  see,  for 
example,  the  statement  of  it  from  the  pen  of  a  scientist 
in  the  Evolution  and  Ethics  of  Huxley  —  between  the  'is  ' 
and  the  'ought,'  serves  to  set  the  objection  to  this  theory 
clearly  in  the  light.  According  to  Mr.  Huxley  the  habit 
of  being  immoral  should  make  the  immoral  come  to  seem 
right.1 

violated  the  maternal  instinct  by  leaving  the  young  behind  in  the  nest. 
(Descent  of  Man,  p.  87.) 

1 1  do  not  see  that  the  hypothesis  of  race  experience  or  race  habit  helps 
the  case  much,  for  the  child  does  not  inherit  the  content  of  morality;  he  gets 
it  the  rather  through  instruction  and  social  example,  and  has  to  reduce  it  to 
his  personal  habit  just  the  same,  even  though  it  do  —  as  it  probably  does  — 
embody  race  custom.  How  then  would  such  habits  differ  from  his  other 
private  habits  ?  On  this  point  of  Huxley's  see  Sect.  194. 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  41 

This  criticism  of  the  habit  theory  may  be  put  in  the 
terms  of  the  child's  social  growth  without  any  trouble ; 
and  that  may  serve  to  show  it  more  forcibly.  The  child 
has,  as  we  have  seen,  a  habitual  self.  It  is  the  outcome 
of  the  assimilations  and  actions  which  he  has  already 
learned.  So  the  tendencies  to  conduct  in  realizing  the 
behests  of  this  self  are,  it  is  easy  to  see,  the  same  actions 
which  the  advocates  of  the  habit  theory  bring  forward  as 
the  acts  which,  as  due  to  habit  or  custom,  are  morally 
right.  Now  if  we  agree  with  this  theory,  and  say  that 
those  acts  which  are  guaranteed  by  habit  are  the  right 
ones,  then  what  shall  we  do  with  all  the  tendencies  to 
action  coming  from  the  presence  of  the  other  self  which 
we  have  found  the  child  entertaining  also,  the  accommo- 
dating self  ?  The  accommodating  self  is  the  learning 
self ;  the  thought  of  self  which  comes  to  imitate,  to  be 
teachable,  sympathetic,  generous.  I  think  it  only  needs 
to  be  put  into  words  that  both  these  selves  are  equally 
real  to  convince  us  that  those  sharp  approvals  or  condem- 
nations of  ourselves  which  we  experience  in  our  judgments 
of  right  and  wrong,  are  not  always  administered  in  favour 
of  the  self  of  habit. 

Or,  if  we  look  at  the  question  from  the  side  of  the  race 
development  of  mankind,  we  find,  as  I  have  argued  at 
length  in  the  volume  referred  to,  that  the  repetitions  of 
habitual  performances  by  an  organism  would  not  give 
growth.  In  order  to  grow,  to  be  better  as  an  organism, 
merely,  there  must  be  constant  violations  or  modifications 
of  habit.  So  if  we  put  the  ethical  sense  only  on  the  plane 
that  some  of  the  advocates  of  the  habit  theory  claim  for  it, 
—  i.e.,  an  index  of  organic  utility  and  development,  —  even 
then  we  must  find  in  it  more  than  the  outcome  of  repeated 


42  The  Self-conscious  Person 

habit.  This  is  not  the  place  to  carry  out  this  thought ;  but 
it  is  on  the  surface  difficult  to  see  how  -we  could  hold  that 
departure  from  habit  as  such  arouses  the  sense  of  wrong, 
if  all  through  the  course  of  organic  and  mental  develop- 
ment it  is  by  just  such  violations  and  modifications  of  old 
habits  that  new  adaptations  have  been  secured  to  the  growth 
and  evolution  of  the  organism.  There  is  a  sense,  it  is  true, 
in  which  the  ethical  sense  may  be  said  to  represent  a 
habit ;  but,  as  its  statement  below  will  show,  it  is  different 
from  the  view  customarily  developed  by  the  associationists.1 

In  short,  not  to  go  into  this  theory  further,  we  may  say 
that  it  represents  an  attempt  to  found  the  moral  senti- 
ments upon  one  of  the  two  selves  which  the  social  life 
involves,  —  the  self  of  habit. 

21.  And  the  other  historical  theory  mentioned  above 
does  the  reverse  ;  it  attempts  to  derive  these  feelings  also 
from  one  of  the  two,  but  it  takes  the  other.  Sympathy, 
benevolence,  —  which  when  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms 
means  the  retirement  of  the  aggressive,  self-seeking  agent 
in  man  for  a  period,  and  in  reference  to  a  particular  object, 
—  instinctive  sympathy  is  the  watchword  of  the  traditional 
English  theory  of  the  moral  sentiments.  Adam  Smith, 
Darwin,  Stephen,  and  many  other  apostles  of  the  natural- 
history  conception  in  this  realm,  think  that  morality  is  a 
complex  outcome  of  animal  or  social  sympathy;  and  the 
later  writers  account  for  the  rise  of  sympathy  by  making 
it  of  biological  utility  in  the  preservation  of  animal  com- 
panies. 

1  Of  course  this  is  only  one  criticism  of  the  habit  views;  another  would  be, 
that  they  do  not  account  for  reflective  morality,  since  they  do  not  consider  the 
moral  sense  a  function  of  the  thought  of  self.  The  relation  of  private  morality 
to  social  custom  is  considered  in  detail  further  on. 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  43 

Put  psychologically,  this  is  the  recognition  of  the  accom- 
modating self.  Actions  which  are  done  in  deference  to 
the  presence  and  conduct  of  others,  which  involve  a  de- 
parture from  the  first  promptings  of  self-interest,  an  abey- 
ance of  the  aggressions  of  the  self  of  habit,  —  such  actions, 
this  theory  holds,  are  good.  Self-denial  is  the  keynote  of 
morality ;  that  is,  in  so  far  as  morality  is  reflective  at  all. 

Now  it  might  not  be  an  adequate  criticism  of  this  view 
to  say  that  it  is  one-sided,  as  the  former  theory  is  other- 
sided  ;  some  one-sided  things  are  true.  But  the  same  tests 
which  we  applied  to  the  habit  theory  may  be  brought  into 
requisition  here.  Our  moral  approbations  do  not  ipso  facto 
attach  to  sympathy  nor  to  the  generous  man.  Is  generosity 
never  wrong  ?  Is  not  sympathy  with  the  condemned  mur- 
derer a  maudlin  sort  of  virtue  ?  Are  the  sudden,  irrespon- 
sible, capricious  appeals  of  our  environment  to  our  private 
sympathies  the  highest  ground  and  the  final  criterion  of 
good  conduct  ?  Then  is  the  improvident  the  better  man, 
and  the  ascetic  by  taste  the  greater  saint. 

And  is  there  no  virtue  after  all  in  habit  ?  Is  the  incal- 
culable, the  exceptional,  the  impulsive,  normally  a  higher 
kind,  a  safer  kind,  a  more  development-furthering  kind 
of  action  than  the  regular,  well-tested,  smooth-working, 
grounded  acts  of  organic  and  intellectual  habit  ?  Or,  if 
the  reader  wish  to  lift  the  question  up  to  the  higher  plane 
of  spiritual  interest,  setting  aside  considerations  of  organic 
development,  let  me  ask  the  question  differently:  Is  the 
kingdom  of  spirit  so  chaotic  that  the  accidental  sugges- 
tions of  sympathy  are  of  more  value  in  it  than  the  reason- 
able action  which  is  ruled  by  some  kind  of  law?  Granted 
we  do  not  find,  with  the  associationists,  that  the  law  of 
habit  is  adequate,  even  in  the  lower  realm  of  biological 


44  The  Self-conscious  Person 

growth,  still  the  absence  of  law,  be  it  in  a  realm  of  higher 
interests,  would  seem  to  be  somewhat  of  a  hindrance  to 
our  getting  an  adequate  doctrine  of  the  meaning  of  the 
ethical  life  of  man. 

22.  But,  more  positively:  turning  now  to  the  child  and 
observing  him  in  the  period  when  his  personal  relationships 
are  becoming  complex,  say  along  through  the  third  year, 
the  dawning  moral  sense  is  then  caught  as  it  were  in  the 
process  of  making.  And  in  it  we  have  a  right  to  see,  as  I 
have  had  occasion  to  say  in  regard  to  other  of  the  child's 
processes,  the  progress  of  the  race  depicted  with  more 
or  less  adequacy  of  detail. 

The  child  begins  to  be  dimly  aware  of  such  a  presence, 
in  his  contact  with  others,  as  that  which  has  been  called  in 
the  abstract  the  socius.  What  this  is  to  him  is,  of  course, 
at  this  early  stage  simply  an  element  of  personal  quality  in 
the  suggestions  which  he  now  gets  from  others ;  an  ele- 
ment which  is  not  done  justice  to  by  either  of  the  thoughts 
of  self  to  which  he  is  accustomed  on  occasion  to  react.  He 
notes  in  the  behaviour  of  his  father  and  mother,  whenever 
certain  contingencies  of  the  social  situation  present  them- 
selves, a  characteristic  which,  in  the  development  of  '  per- 
sonality-suggestion,' was  termed  the  '  regularity  of  personal 
agency.' 1  He  sees  the  father  pained  when  he  has  to  ad- 
minister punishment ;  and  he  hears  the  words,  '  Father 
does  not  like  to  punish  his  little  boy.'  He  finds  the  mother 
reluctantly  refusing  to  give  a  biscuit  when  it  is  her  evident 
desire  to  give  it.  He  sees  those  around  him  doing  gay 
things  with  heavy  hearts,  and  forcing  themselves  to  be 
cheerful  in  the  doing  of  things  which  are  not  pleasant. 

1  .Mtntal  Development,  p.  125. 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  45 

He  sees  hesitations,  conflicts,  indecisions,  and  from  the 
bosom  of  them  all  he  sees  emerge  the  indications  of  some- 
thing beyond  the  mere  individual  attitudes  of  the  actor, 
something  which  stands  toward  these  higher  persons  from 
whom  he  learns,  as  the  family  law,  embodied  possibly  in 
the  father,  stands  toward  him. 

Now  I  do  not  mean  that  the  child  sees  all  this  in  the 
terms  in  which  I  have  described  what  he  'sees.'  He  does 
not  see  anything  clearly.  He  simply  feels  puzzled  at  the 
richness  of  the  indications  of  personal  behaviour  which  pour 
in  upon  him.  But  the  very  puzzle  of  these  situations  is 
just  the  essential  thing.  It  means  that  the  categories  of 
personality  which  he  has  so  far  acquired,  the  two  selves 
which  exhaust  the  possible  modes  of  behaviour  he  is  able  to 
depict  to  himself  in  thought,  are  really  inadequate.  Here 
in  these  situations  of  his  father  and  mother  is  more  per- 
sonal suggestion,  which  is  still  quite  '  projective.'  It  is 
personal ;  things  do  not  show  it.  But  it  is  not  yet  under- 
stood. The  self  of  habit,  no  less  than  the  self  of  accommo- 
dation, is  thrust  aside,  as  he  sees  his  mother's  sorrow  when 
she  refuses  him  the  biscuit ;  he  cannot  act  aggressively 
toward  her  nor  yet  sympathetically.  There  must  needs  be 
some  other  type  of  personal  behaviour,  some  other  thought  of 
a  self ;  for  if  not,  then  character  must  after  all  remain  to 
him  a  chaotic,  capricious  thing. 

23.  We  may  ask,  before  we  attempt  to  find  a  way  for 
the  child  to  extricate  himself  from  this  confusion  in  his 
thoughts  of  personality,  whether  he  have  in  his  own  expe- 
rience any  analogies  which  will  help  him  to  assimilate  the 
new  suggestive  elements.  And  our  observation  is  very 
superficial  if  we  do  not  light  upon  an  evident  thing  in 
his  life ;  the  thing  he  has  come  to  understand  something 


46  The  Self-conscious  Person 

about  every  time  he  obeys.  This  is  so  evidently  a  thing  of 
value  that  psychologists  long  ago  struck  upon  it.  The 
'  word  of  command '  is  to  Professor  Bain  the  schoolmaster 
to  morality.  By  it  the  child  gets  the  habit  of  personal 
subjection  which,  when  he  illustrates  it  reflectively,  shows 
itself  as  morality.  This,  I  think,  is  true  as  far  as  the  func- 
tion of  the  'schoolmaster'  is  concerned;  but  much  more 
than  this  schoolmaster  is  needed  to  school  the  agent  boy 
to  morality.  How  it  works,  however,  another  appeal  to  the 
growing  sense  of  self  will  serve  to  show. 

Whenever  he  obeys,  the  boy  has  forced  in  upon  him  a 
situation  which  his  thoughts  of  himself  are  not  adequate 
to  interpret.  He  is  responding  neither  to  his  habitual  self 
nor  to  his  accommodating  self.  Not  to  the  former,  for  if 
the  thing  he  is  told  to  do  is  something  he  does  not  want 
to  do,  his  habits,  his  private  preferences,  are  directly  vio- 
lated. And  on  the  other  hand  he  is  not  acting  out  his 
accommodating  self  simply,  just  in  proportion  as  he  is 
unwilling  to  do  what  he  is  told  to  do.  If  this  self  held 
all  the  room  in  his  consciousness,  then  obedience  would 
be  companionship,  and  compliance  would  be  no  more  than 
approval.  No,  it  is  really  his  private  habitual  self  that  is 
mainly  present ;  the  other  being  a  forced  product,  unless 
by  dint  of  schooling  in  submission  his  obedience  has 
become  free  and  unconstrained. 

Besides  these  elements,  his  two  selves,  then,  what  more 
is  there  to  the  child  ?  This  :  a  dominating  other  self,  a 
new  alter,  is  there ;  that  is  the  important  thing.  And 
what  does  it  mean  ?  It  means,  in  the  first  instance,  a  line 
of  conduct  on  his  part  which  the  obedience  represents. 
But  in  this  line  of  conduct  we  now  have  the  real  school- 
master to  the  boy.  It  is  just  by  it  that  he  learns  more 


T/ie  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  47 

about  character,  precisely  as,  by  his  spontaneous  imitations 
at  the  earlier  stage,  he  established  lines  of  conduct  which 
taught  him  more  about  character.  At  this  stage  also,  his 
intelligence  is  not  so  rudimentary  as  at  the  earlier  one. 
It  does  not  take  him  long  to  learn  certain  great  things. 
By  the  action  he  performs  through  obedience,  he  learns  the 
meaning  of  these  actions  :  how  they  feel,  what  good  or 
evil  results  they  lead  to.  And  in  all  his  learning  by  this 
agency,  he  learns  above  all  the  great  lesson  essential  to  the 
development  of  his  thought  of  self :  that  there  is  a  some- 
thing always  present,  an  atmosphere,  a  circle  of  common 
interest,  a  family  propriety,  a  mass  of  accepted  tradition. 
This  is  his  first  realization  to  himself  of  what  the  socius 
means.  It  comes  by  his  growth  as  a  personal  self,  but 
the  process  of  obedience  greatly  abbreviates  his  growth.1 
For  a  long  time  it  is  embodied  as  a  matter  of  course 
in  the  persons  whom  he  obeys.  But  the  social  limita- 
tions which  these  persons  respectively  represent  are  not 
always  coextensive  or  parallel.  His  father  and  mother 
often  embody  very  different  family  spirits  to  him.  And  it 
is  only  after  many  tentative  adjustments,  mistaken  efforts 
to  please,  excesses  of  duty  in  one  direction,  and  instances 
of  rebellion2  in  other  directions,  that  he  learns  the  essen- 
tial agreements  of  the  different  persons  who  set  law  to 
him. 

Now  this  is  a  new  thought  of  self .     How  can  it  be  other- 
wise when  all  its  origin  is  from  persons,  and  all  its  char- 

1  As  he  grows  older  his  intellectual  faculties  are  also  exercised  at  their  best 
upon  those  puzzling  situations  presented  by  the  behaviour  of  others  toward 
one  another,  in  which  a  solution  by  his  own  action  is  not  immediately  required. 

2  The  instances  of  violent  rebellion,  which   become  frantic  and  dramatic 
sometimes  in  young  children,  are  emphasized  by  Sully  {Studies  of  Childhocd, 
Chap.  VIII.)  as  impressive  revelations  to  the  child  of  the  existence  of  law. 


48  The  Self-conscious  Person 

acters  are  learned  only  by  the  efforts  of  the  struggling 
hero  to  realize  their  meaning  by  his  own  actions  ?  Apart 
from  the  elements  of  a  possible  self,  there  is  absolutely 
nothing.  It  is  his  own  actions  felt,  then  added  to  imita- 
tively  and  made  to  illustrate  the  actions  of  others,  with 
which  he  fills  his  consciousness  when  he  thinks  of  it.  And 
in  each  of  his  straining  efforts  to  obey,  to  do  what  he  is 
told  to  do,  his  success  or  failure  is  a  further  defining  of 
the  limitations  of  one  or  the  other  of  his  old  selves,  and  in 
so  far  the  creation  of  a  new  self  which  sets  law  to  both  of 
them. 

Now  this  new  self  arises,  as  we  have  seen,  right  out  of 
the  competitions,  urgencies,  inhibitions  of  the  old.  Sup- 
pose a  boy  who  has  once  obeyed  the  command  to  let  an 
apple  alone,  coming  to  confront  the  apple  again,  when 
there  is  no  one  present  to  make  him  obey.  There  is  his 
private,  greedy,  habitual  self,  eying  the  apple ;  there  is 
also  the  spontaneously  suggestible,  accommodating,  imita- 
tive self  over  against  it,  mildly  prompting  him  to  do  as  his 
father  said  and  let  the  apple  alone ;  and  there  is  —  or 
would  be,  if  the  obedience  had  taught  him  no  new  thought 
of  self  —  the  quick  victory  of  the  former.  But  now  a 
lesson  has  been  learned.  There  arises  a  thought  of  one 
who  obeys,  who  has  no  struggle  in  carrying  out  the  be- 
hests of  the  father.  This  may  be  vague  ;  his  habit  may  be 
yet  weak  in  the  absence  of  persons  and  penalties,  but  it  is 
there,  however  weak.  AndMt  is  no  longer  merely  the  faint 
imitation  of  an  obedient  self  which  he  does  not  understand. 
It  carries  within  it,  it  is  true,  all  the  struggle  of  the  first 
obedience,  all  the  painful  protests  of  the  private  greedy 
self,  all  the  smoke  of  the  earlier  battlefield.  But  while  he 
hesitates,  it  is  now  not  merely  the  balance  of  the  old  forces 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  49 

that  makes  him  hesitate  ;  it  is  the  sense  of  the  new,  better, 
obedient  self  hovering  before  him.  A  few  such  fights  and 
he  begins  to  grow  accustomed  to  the  presence  of  some- 
thing in  him  which  represents  his  father,  mother,  or  in 
general,  the  lawgiving  personality.  So,  as  he  understands 
the  meaning  of  obedience  better,  through  his  own  acting 
out  of  its  behests  in  varied  circumstances,  the  projective 
elements  of  the  alter  which  thus  sets  law  to  him  become 
subjective.  The  socius  becomes  more  and  more  intimate 
as  a  law-abiding  self  of  his  own. 

24.  Then,  with  this  self  in  him,  he  proceeds  to  do  with 
it  what  we  always  do  with  our  thoughts  of  self ;  he  '  ejects ' 
it  into  all  the  other  members  of  the  family  and  of  his 
social  circle.  He  expects,  and  rightly  too,  that  each 
brother  and  sister  will  have  the  same  responsibility  to 
the  Zeitgeist  that  he  has  —  will  reverence  the  same 
Penates.  He  exacts  from  them  the  same  obedience  to 
father  and  mother  that  he  himself  renders.  It  is  amus- 
ing to  see  the  jealousy  with  which  one  child  in  a  family 
will  watch  the  others,  and  see  that  they  do  not  transgress 
the  law  of  the  family.  If  the  father  makes  an  exception 
of  one  little  being,  he  is  quickly  '  brought  up '  by  the  pro- 
tests of  other  little  beings.1  This  is  a  pertinent  piece  of 
evidence  to  the  essential  truthfulness  of  the  process  de- 
picted above,  where  it  was  said  that  the  alter  is  one  with 
the  ego  as  a  self,  and  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  child  to 
attach  predicates  to  the  one  without,  ipso  facto,  attaching 
the  same  predicates  to  the  other.  To  say  that  little 
brother  need  not  obey,  when  I  am  called  on  to  obey,  is 

1  Cf.  the  instances  cited  by  Sully,  loc.  fit.,  Chap.  VIII.,  with  his  curious 
explanation  of  them  as  implying  an  '  instinct  for  order '  in  the  child  (p.  284 
etseq.}. 


«>O  The  Self-conscious  Person 

to  say  that  little  brother  is  in  some  way  not  a  person,  that 
is  all.  So  we  constantly  have  to  explain  to  our  children 
'the  dollie  cannot  feel,'  'the  leather  elephant  cannot  eat,' 
'the  woolly  dog  need  not  be  beaten  when  he  gets  in  the 
way.'  "These  things,"  in  short,  we  say  to  our  children, 
"  are  not  selves ;  they  have  the  shapes  of  possible  selves, 
it  may  be,  and  they  have  so  far  served  as  convenient 
alters  for  you  to  practise  on,  but  they  need  not  be  ex- 
pected to  take  up  with  you  the  responsibilities  of  family 
life." 

So,  once  born  in  the  fire  and  smoke  of  personal  friction, 
the  socius  lives  in  the  child,  a  presence  of  which  he  can 
never  rid  himself.  It  is  the  germ  of  the  ideals  of  life, 
the  measure  of  the  life  to  come,  both  in  this  world  and  in 
the  next  ;  for  it  is  this  self  that  the  child  thereafter  pur- 
sues in  all  his  development,  making  it  his  only  to  find  that 
it  is  further  beyond  him.  He  is  "ever  learning,  but  never 
able  to  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  truth." 

25.  Taking  up  the  sense  of  morality,  therefore,  —  the 
sense  that  we  mean  when  we  use  the  word  '  ought,'  —  we 
now  have  it.  Let  the  child  continue  to  act  by  the  rule  of 
either  of  his  former  partial  selves,  —  the  private  habitual 
self  or  the  accommodating  capricious  self  of  impulse  and 
sympathy, — and  this  new  ideal  of  a  self,  a  self  that  ful- 
fils law,  comes  up  to  call  him  to  account.  My  father, 
says  the  child,  knows  and  would  say  '  what '  and  '  how ' ; 
and  later,  when  the  father-self  has  proved  not  to  know  all 
4  whats '  and  all  '  hows,'  then  my  teacher,  my  book,  my  in- 
spired writer,  my  God,  knows  'what'  and  'how'  still.  In  so 
far  as  I  have  learned  from  him,  I  also  know ;  and  this  I 
expect  you,  my  brother,  my  friend,  my  alter,  to  know  too, 
for  our  common  life  together.  And  the  sense  of  this  my 


The  Person  as  an'  Ethical  Self  51 

7 


self  of  conformity  to  what  he  toaches  and  would  have  me 
do  —  this  is,  once  for  all,  my  conscience. 

We  do  not  need  to  develop  in  this  place  a  complete 
theory  of  the  adult  conscience  ;  that  would  be  outside  our 
topic.  But  no  account  of  the  development  of  the  sense 
of  self,  or  of  the  social  conditions  under  which  the  sense 
of  self  arises  and  grows,  as  the  later  developments  of  our 
work  go  on  to  depict  them,  would  be  adequate  which  left 
out  this  highest  reach  of  the  child's  constructiveness.  We 
are  wont  to  think  that  we  can  draw  lines  in  the  attain- 
ments of  mind,  interpret  so  far  and  leave  the  rest  over  ; 
but  the  surging  activities  of  stimulation  and  response  pass 
right  over  our  boundary  lines,  and  we  find  the  germs  of 
the  higher  impregnating  the  lower  stages.  The  child, 
when  once  this  sense  of*  a  self  which  is  not  but  ought  to 

\  be,  comes  to  him,  does  everything  under  its  law  —  whether 

his  action  conform  to  what  he  understands  of  it  or  whether 

he  disobey  and  offend  it.     He  is  henceforth  never  inno- 

/)  cent  with  the  innocence  of  neutrality.     He  must  think  of 

*"  the  better  with  sorrow  if  he  choose  the  worse,  and  of  the 

worse  with  joy  if  he  choose  the  better  ;  and  when    he 

;  makes  his  act  only  in  response  to  the  measure  of  good 

V  which  he  sees,  taking  a  step  in  the  dark,  still  there  is  with 

(^  him  the  necessary  conviction  of  a  self  that  he  groped  for, 
did  not  find,  —  a  law  behind  the  chaos  of  his  struggle. 
26.    It  is  enough,  in  this  connection,  that  one  or  two 
Ctruths  regarding  the   nature  of   this  ethical  self   should 

QDemain  in  mind.  It  is,  first  of  all,  a  slow  social  attainment 
on  the  part  of  the  child.  He  gets  it  only  by  getting  cer- 
tain other  thoughts  of  self  first.  Then  it  takes  on  various 

^  forms,  each  held  to  only  to  be  superseded  in  turn  by  some- 

,"  thing  higher  and  richer.     The  obligation  to  obey  it  is  also 


52  The  Self-conscious  Person 

slow  in  its  rise.  It  is  a  function  of  the  self  —  this  self,  the 
socius  —  just  as  the  tendency  to  yield  to  the  behests  of 
habit  or  of  sympathy  are  simply  functions,  the  motor  side 
of  their  respective  contents.  The  '  ought '  comes  right  up 
out  of  the  'must.'  Transfer  the  self  to  be  obeyed  from 
the  environment  to  the  inner  throne,  make  it  an  ego 
instead  of  an  alter,  and  its  authority  is  not  a  whit  changed 
in  nature.  Something  of  its  executive  compulsion  is  gone; 
it  is  one  of  the  very  intimate  differences  between  an  ego 
and  an  alter,  that  the  ego  is  its  own  impulsion  while  the 
alter  brings  compulsion  ;  and  as  the  alter  aspect  of  the 
new  self  becomes  more  and  more  adequately  assimilated, 
this  difference  grows  more  emphatic.  The  developed 
ethical  sense  needs  less  and  less  to  appeal  to  an  alter  self, 
an  authority,  a  holy  oracle,  to  sanction  the  ought  of  con- 
science ;  it  gets  itself  more  and  more  promptly  executed 
by  its  own  inner  impulsion.  A  history  of  the  great  world- 
religions,  or  of  the  inner  form  of  their  deities,  might  be 
written  on  the  basis  of  this  movement  in  the  form  of  the 
ethical  self,  which  also  implicates  the  social  Zeitgeist^ 

27.  And  a  second  point  to  be  borne  in  mind  :  that  as 
the  socius  expands  in  the  mind  of  the  child,  there  is  the 
constant  tendency  to  make  it  real  —  to  eject  it  —  in  some 
concrete  form  in  the  social  group.  The  father,  mother, 
nurse,  are  apt  to  be  the  first  embodiment  of  social  law,  and 
their  conduct,  interpreted  through  obedience  and  imitation, 
the  first  ethical  standard.  And  as  the  child  finds  one  man 
or  woman  inadequate  to  the  growing  complications  of  the 
case,  other  concrete  selves  are  erected  in  the  same  way. 
The  popular  voice,  the  literature  of  the  period,  the  king, 

1  Compare  what  is  said  on  the  '  Religious  Sanctions,'  Chap.  X.,  §  4. 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  53 

the  state,  the  church,  —  all  these  are  choice  repositories 
of  the  ejected  ethical  self.  Public  opinion  is  our  modern 
expression  for  the  purely  social  form  of  this  spirit. 

28.  Then  a  third  point :  we  may  ask  what  the  law  is 
which  we  find  this  self  embodying.  And  we  get  a  two- 
fold answer.  Most  comprehensively  it  may  be  said  that 
the  law  is  in  one  sense  always  the  realized  self  of  some- 
body. Apart  from  a  self  it  can  be  nothing,  because  nobody 
would  understand  it.  It  must  come  out  of  somebody's 
apprehension  of  the  social  situation  and  the  requirements 
of  the  case.  The  parents  themselves  are  usually  the  source 
of  family  law  over  against  the  rest  of  the  family.  But  that 
they  are  held  to  the  actual  socius  —  to  the  relationships 
existing  between  them  and  the  others  —  is  seen  in  any 
attempts  they  make  to  transcend  these  relationships.  Sup- 
pose that  the  father  commands  each  of  the  family  to  dance 
the  highland  fling  and  then  to  write  a  book.  Whether  the 
first  of  these  commands  be  obeyed,  would  depend  upon 
whether  he  has  had  a  right  to  include  in  his  sense  of  the 
alter  personalities  of  the  family  the  accomplishment  in 
question.  And,  as  to  the  second,  it  is  likely  that  he  would 
get  a  laugh  for  his  pains. 

But  further,  the  law,  thus  tempered  by  the  thought  of 
the  other  selves  involved,  is  a  function  of  the  socius-con- 
sciousness  in  each  of  its  two  aspects.  It  is  'projective'  to 
the  child  when  he  first  receives  it  and  submits  himself  to 
it.  He  does  not  yet  understand  it ;  it  requires  him  to  act 
blindly.  He,  in  his  individual  capacity,  is  not  a  judge  of 
'the  wisdom  or  appropriateness  of  it.  The  other  person 
sets  it,  the  self  in  whom  he  is  then  finding  his  socius  real- 
ized ;  and  the  child  is  properly  social  only  if  he  submit, 
even  if  he  have  to  be  made  properly  social  by  being 


54  Tlie  Self-conscious  Person 

compelled  to  submit.  And  the  other  aspect  of  the  law  is 
equally  important,  that  set  by  the  other  thought  of  self 
which  the  socius  includes,  the  '  ejective '  embodiment  of 
the  law.  After  the  child  has  obeyed,  and  learned  by  obe- 
dience, he  himself  sets  the  law  of  the  house  for  the  other 
members  of  it.  And  the  law  then  becomes  '  common  law,1 
inasmuch  as  it  is  engrained  in  the  very  thought  of  the 
better  self  of  every  member  of  the  social  group.  All  com- 
mands and  behests  which  are  not  thus  embodied  in  the 
spirit  of  the  whole,  are  yet  to  a  degree  really  only  the 
reflection  of  the  highest  thought  of  self  in  the  group,  that 
of  the  father ;  if  to  the  others  these  have  not  yet  become 
'common  law,'  the  common  dictates  of  the  common  social 
self,  that  is  because  the  individuals  are  yet  immature  mem- 
bers of  the  circle  or  family.  Put  briefly,  all  law  must  arise 
somewhere  in  the  family  from  the  legitimate  development 
of  the  social  self ;  and  it  is  realized,  or  obeyed  as  law,  only 
as  the  members  of  the  family  come,  each  in  his  turn,  to 
mould  his  social  self  into  intelligent  observance  of  it,  and 
intelligent  enforcement  of  it.  And  the  family  is  typical 
of  the  community. 

29.  A  final  observation  is  this  :  there  is,  as  was  inti- 
mated above,  a  sense  in  which  the  socius,  the  social  self, 
and  with  it  the  ethical  self,  is  a  self  of  habit.  If  this 
thought  of  self  which  we  are  calling  the  '  socius '  really  be, 
in  so  far  as  the  child  understands  his  own  thought  of  it,  a 
sense  of  his  denials  of  both  his  lower  and  less  social  selves 
— the  self  of  private  habit  and  the  self  of  accommodation  — 
in  favour  of  a  law  set  him  by  an  alter,  then  this  very  attitude 
must  become  in  some  degree  a  habit,  a  tendency  to  look 
for  a  higher  law,  a  moving  toward  a  higher  authority.  But 
it  is  a  habit  of  acting,  not  a  habit  of  action.  It  involves 


The  Person  as  an  Ethical  Self  55 

the  most  acutely  painful  and  difficult  violations  of  old 
habits  of  action.  It  is  a  habit  of  violating  habits  —  that 
is  the  relation  of  morality  to  habit.  And  it  is  an  inter- 
esting side-light  on  the  method  of  the  rise  of  the  suc- 
cessive selves  by  imitation  and  submission,  that  in  the 
lower  stages  of  evolution  we  find  the  organism  working 
under  the  same  subtlety.  The  organism  develops  only  by 
cultivating  the  habit  of  imitating ;  while  the  very  value  of 
imitation  is  that  by  it  the  organism  acquires  new  accom- 
modations by  breaking  up  habits  already  acquired.  The 
organism  must  be  ready,  by  a  habit  of  acting,  to  impair 
the  habits  of  action  it  already  has.1  And  the  origin  of  the 
moral  sense  by  this  method  shows  it  to  be  an  imitative 
function.  We  do  right  by  habitually  imitating  a  larger 
self  whose  injunctions  run  counter  to  the  tendencies  of 
our  partial  selves.2 

1  This  amounts  to  what  Mr.  Huxley  describes  as  nature  combating  herself 
(loc.  fi(.,  p.  35),  and  considers  so  surprising.     It  is  the  same  point  of  view, 
on  the  ethical  plane,  that  Mr.  Romanes  has  taken  on  the  biological  plane 
{Ment.  Evol.  in  An.,  p.  20)  in  saying  that  heredity  cannot  provide  in  ad- 
vance for  its  own  modification.     I  have  shown  that  nature  does  produce  just 
this  state  of  things  in  biology  (cf.  Mental  Development,  Chap.  VIII.,  §  5) ; 
Professor  Lloyd  Morgan  has  published  {Habit  and  Instinct,  p.  264)  a  sim- 
ilar criticism  of  Romanes.     In  the  ethical  sense  we    find  nature  combating 
herself  in  the  same  way;   combating  by  a  higher  adaptation  a  lower  law  of 
her  own  making.     It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  such  an  adaptation  is  '  con- 
trary to  nature'  and  not  a  part  of  evolution;   for,  as  Mr.  Huxley  himself  says 
in  a  note,  it  simply  requires  a  larger  way  of  looking  at  the  process  of  evolution 
itself.     See  further  allusion   to   Mr.    Huxley's  position  in  Sect.  194  and  in 
Appendix  C. 

2  The  question  of  the  psychophysics  of  the  moral  sense  cannot  be  discussed 
here;    yet  the  foregoing  position  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  sense  of 
obligation  must  be  accompanied  in  the  brain  with  a  process  which  represents 
a  partial  inhibition  of  lower  motor  syntheses  (representing  habits,  impulses, 
etc.)  by  a  higher  and  more  unstable  motor  integration,  into  which  the  lower 
tend  to  be  brought.     This  second  synthesis  stands  for  the  general  or  ideal  self 
which  sets  law  to  the  lower  partial  selves.     This  view  has  much  in  common 


56  The  Self-conscious  Person 

The  more  refined  phases  of  ethical  emotion,  together 
with  their  influence  on  social  conduct,  are  considered 
under  the  headings  of  'Sentiment'  and  'Sanction.'1 

with  that  developed  by  Guyau  (Esquisse  a"unf  Morale}.  He  says  {Educa- 
tion and  Heredity,  p.  79)  :  "  Thought,  action  —  they  are  at  bottom  identical. 
And  what  is  called  moral  obligation  or  constraint  is,  in  the  sphere  of  the  intel- 
lect, the  sense  of  this  radical  identity;  obligation  is  an  internal  expansion,  a 
need  for  completing  our  ideas  by  making  them  pass  into  action.  Morality  is 
the  unity  of  the  being." 

1  Chaps.  VIII.  §§  2,  4,  IX.  §  5,  and  X.  §  4.  The  ethical  is  so  intimately 
bound  up  with  the  social  —  as  it  is  one  of  my  main  purposes  to  show  —  that 
the  later  chapters  of  the  essay  will  all  be  found  to  contain  ethical  matter. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  SOCIAL  PERSON 

THE  expositions  so  far  made  of  the  child's  progress 
toward  the  complete  equipment  of  himself  for  social  life, 
lead  us  now  to  see  a  principle  ruling  his  development  which 
should  have  more  adequate  formulation  ;  indeed,  we  are 
now  in  position  to  estimate  the  factors  which  enter  into 
his  social  development.  In  this  inquiry  we  come  to  formu- 
late, on  the  basis  of  the  development  of  the  preceding 
chapter,  the  principle  of  'Social  Heredity.'1 

§  I.    Social  Heredity 

30.  We  have  found  that  the  social  sense  of  the  child 
grows  constantly  with  his  personal  acquisition  of  new  func- 
tions, activities,  etc.,  through  the  influence  of  his  social 
environment.  And  further,  his  process  of  acquisition  is 
always  complex.  It  always  involves  two  standards  of  ref- 
erence. The  measure  of  the  child's  capacity  at  any  time 
is  referable  to  his  past ;  he  can  do  only  what  he  has 
learned  to  do.  This  is  what  we  may  call  the  measure  of 
his  attainment  by  the  standard  of  'private  reference.'  He 
is  a  single  individual  person  only  in  so  far  as  we  agree, 

1  The  facts  of  the  indebtedness  of  the  individual  to  his  social  environment 
and  antecedents  are  well  stated  by  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  in  his  Science  of  Ethics, 
Chap.  III.  Other  writers  who  have  emphasized  the  general  truth  of  social 
transmission  by  tradition  are,  in  biology,  Weismann  and  Lloyd  Morgan,  and 
in  philosophy,  Ritchie,  Mackensie,  S.  Alexander. 

5? 


58  The  Social  Person 

more  or  less  tacitly,  to  estimate  him  by  this  standard  ;  by 
what  he  can  do,  with  no  account  of  what  he  can  further 
learn  to  do.  If  we  go  back  and  take  into  account  the 
few  functions  which  his  natural  heredity  gives  him  ready- 
formed, —  his  reflexes,  private  instincts,  etc., — these  too 
come  in  here  as  part  of  the  person  viewed  with  this  private 
reference  alone. 

But  as  soon  as  we  come  to  ask  what  he  can  learn  to  do, 
we  find  that  the  private  reference  carries  us  no  farther; 
we  have  then  to  take  a  wider  point  of  view,  — the  point  of 
view  of  '  public  reference '  or  '  social  reference.1  We  have 
found  that  the  prime  and  essential  method  of  his  learning 
is  by  imitative  absorption  of  the  actions,  thoughts,  expres- 
sions, of  other  persons.  He  has  grown  up  in  a  setting  of 
social  functions  of  a  type  higher  always  than  that  of  his 
private  accomplishment ;  and  his  elevation  to  this  higher 
plane,  at  each  stage,  is  just  by  his  gradual  absorption  of 
'  copies,'  patterns,  examples,  from  the  social  life  about  him. 

And  again  as  soon  as  we  come  to  ask  genetic  questions, 
questions  pertaining  to  the  origin  of  his  activities,  con- 
sidered one  by  one,  we  find  that,  at  each  stage  of  his 
progress,  it  was  only  by  a  process  which  brought  in  the 
public  or  social  reference  that  he  could  gain  the  functions 
which  he  afterwards  considers  private  to  himself.  We 
have  traced  this  dependence  upon  the  social  environment 
in  the  matter  of  his  '  interests,'  and  we  will  learn  further  on 
that  even  in  his  originalities,  his  inventions,  he  is  by  no 
means  independent  of  the  scheme  of  social  activities  which 
are  current  in  his  environment.  So  the  sphere  of  the 
private  reference  grows  smaller  and  more  contracted  the 
farther  we  go  back  in  his  life-history,  until  we  reach 
the  bare  naked  presence  of  the  infant  endowed  only  with 


Social  Heredity  59 

what  he  has  inherited,  together  with  the  magnificent 
capacity,  which  he  so  soon  begins  to  show,  of  learning  by 
the  absorption  of  social  '  copy,'  and  of  gradually  growing 
into  conformity  to  this  copy  both  in  his  thought  and  in 
his  conduct. 

Even  farther  back  than  this  also,  do  we  find  a  similar 
state  of  things.  In  the  instincts  of  the  animals  we  see  a 
series  of  functions  which  could  have  arisen  only  as  fitting 
the  animal  to  maintain  a  gregarious  and  co-operative  life. 
The  actual  adaptations  which  the  possession  of  such  charac- 
ters gave  the  parent  animals  —  whatever  theory  of  physical 
heredity  we  may  hold  —  is  the  only  justification  of  them 
in  the  offspring ;  so  we  may  say  that  even  the  infant's 
private  physical  self  —  the  organism  with  which  he  is  born 
—  is  the  reflection  of  a  state  of  living  which  involved  a 
more  or  less  complex  system  of  social  relationships.  Now, 
waiving  the  question  as  to  the  degree  in  which  it  is  true 
that  an  exclusively  private  reference  of  an  individual,  be 
he  child,  animal,  youth,  man,  is  impossible  in  any  case  — 
whether  he  does  anything  or  whether  he  does  nothing  in 
securing  growth,  or  progress,  absolutely  by  himself,  — 
waiving  this,  and  contenting  ourselves,  at  this  stage  of  the 
inquiry,  with  the  smaller  fact  that  there  are  many  things 
that  he  cannot  learn  to  do  without  help  from  his  social 
environment,  let  us  call  this  general  fact,  that  in  much  of 
his  personal  growth  he  is  indebted  to  society,  the  fact  of 
'  Social  Heredity.'  We  may  then  go  on  to  draw  the  lines 
of  definition  and  description  more  narrowly. 

31.  It  does  not  much  matter  how  far  the  animals  have 
functions  which  they  learn  only  through  the  stimulus 
of  gregarious  existence.  It  is  an  interesting  biological 
question  on  which  light  has  lately  been  thrown.  But 


60  The  Social  Person 

here  we  may  limit  the  inquiry  to  the  human  person's  de- 
velopment, and  so  keep  in  the  line  which  leads  up  to  hu- 
man social  organization.  Several  things  may  then  be  said 
about  Social  Heredity. 

(1)  The  first  thing  to  be  said  is  that  it  is  in  a  true  sense 
'  heredity.' J    The  child,  apart  from  the  defective  in  mind  or 
body,  learns  to  speak,  write,  read,  play,  combine  force  with 
others,  build  structures,  do  book-keeping,  shoot  firearms, 
address  meetings,  teach  classes,  conduct  business,  practise 
law  and  medicine  —  or  whatever  his  line  of  further  develop- 
ment may  be  away  from  the  three  '  r's  '  of  usual  attainment 
—  just  as  well  as  if  he  had  received  an  instinct  for  that 
activity  at  birth  from  his  father  and  mother.     His  father 
or  mother  may  have  the  accomplishment  in  question  ;  and 
he  may  learn  it  from  him  or  her.     But  then  both  the  father 
and  mother  may  not  have  it,  and  he  then  learns  it  from 
some  one  else.     It  is  inheritance ;  for  it  shows  the  attain- 
ments of  the  fathers  handed  on  to  the  children  ;  but  it  is 
not  physical  heredity,  since  it  is  not  transmitted  physically 
at  birth. 

(2)  It  is  heredity  also  in  that  the  child  cannot  escape  it. 
It  is  as  inexorably  his  as  the  colour  of  his  eyes  and  the  shape 


1  The  use  of  the  term  '  heredity '  in  this  connection  has  been  objected  to, 
especially  by  Professor  Lloyd  Morgan,  Habit  ami  Instinct,  p.  183,  and  Professor 
1.  I'.  <  "ope,  American  \atnralist,  April,  1896,  p.  345.  He-sides  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  phrase  '  Social  Heredity  '  ^iven  in  the  text,  the  reader  may  consult 
my  papers  in  the  American  Naturalist,  May,  1896,  p.  422,  and  July,  1896, 
p.  355  f.  I  do  not  find  it  possible  to  adopt  Professor  Lloyd  Morgan's  exclusive 
use  of  the  term  'tradition,'  since  that  word  denotes  the  matter  handed  down, 
while  'social  heredity'  indicates  the  imitative  process  of  absorption  of  this 
matter  of  tradition  by  individuals,  whereby  its  continuity  from  generation  to 
generation  is  secured.  The  social  heredity  of  individuals  differs  with  sex, 
temperament,  etc.,  while  their  tradition  may  be  the  same :  social  heredity  is 
the  outcome  of  a  personal  reaction  ufon  tradition. 


Social  Heredity  61 

of  his  nose.  He  is  born  into  a  system  of  social  relation- 
ships just  as  he  is  born  into  a  certain  quality  of  air.  As 
he  grows  in  body  by  breathing  the  one,  so  he  grows  in 
mind  by  absorbing  the  other.  The  influence  is  as  real 
and  as  tangible ;  and  the  only  reason  that  it  is  variable 
in  its  results  upon  different  individuals  is  that  each  indi- 
vidual has  his  physical  heredity  besides,  and  the  outcome 
is  always  the  outcome  of  the  two  factors,  —  natural  tem- 
perament and  social  heredity.  The  limits  of  the  relative 
influence  of  these  two  factors  I  shall  speak  of  again ;  here 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  the  development  of  the  natural 
disposition  is  always  directed  more  or  less  into  the  channels 
opened  up  by  the  social  forces  of  the  environment.  The 
union  of  these  two  factors  leads  us,  however,  to  observe  a 
further  point. 

(3)  The  influence  of  social  heredity  is,  in  a  large  sense, 
inversely  as  the  amount  and  defmiteness  of  natural  hered- 
ity. By  this  is  meant  that  the  more  a  person  or  an  animal 
is  destined  to  learn  in  his  lifetime,  the  less  fully  equipped 
with  instincts  and  special  organic  adaptations  must  he  be 
at  birth.  This  has  been  made  so  clear  by  recent  biological 
discussion  that  I  need  do  no  more  than  refer  to  it.  The 
interpretation  of  a  creature's  infancy  turns  upon  the  ques- 
tion how  much  the  exigencies  of  future  life  are  to  call  upon 
him  to  learn.  If  a  great  deal,  then  we  find  him  born  prac- 
tically helpless  and  requiring  artificial  support  and  atten- 
tion during  a  long  infancy  period.1  If  the  young  creature  is 
to  have  a  life  of  relatively  unchanging  activities  with  little 
need  for  the  acquisition  of  functions  not  already  possessed 
by  the  species  as  instincts,  then  he  comes  into  the  world 

1  Cf.  Fiske,  Cosmic  Evolution,  and  Baldwin,  Mental  Development,  pp.  28  f. 


62  The  Social  Person 

with  ready-made  instinctive  activities,  and  can  take  care  of 
himself  independently  very  early,  or  even  at  birth.  The 
two  organic  tendencies  seem  each  to  have  had  exceedingly 
wide  independent  development  in  the  different  forms  of  life. 
In  the  insects  we  find  the  instinctive  apparatus  marvellously 
complete  ;  much  of  the  life-history  of  the  insect  being  pre- 
pared for  in  the  equipment  which  he  brings  into  the  world. 
The  other  extreme  is  realized  in  the  human  infant.  He 
has  very  few  instincts,  and  these  are  almost  all  fitted  to 
secure  organic  satisfaction.  Many  of  them  terminate  with 
the  rise  of  volition.  The  insects  have  remarkable  instincts, 
but  cannot  learn  to  do  new  things ;  the  baby,  on  the  con- 
trary, has  no  complete  instincts  to  speak  of,  but  can  learn 
to  do  almost  anything.  Now  the  learning  capacity  is  the 
capacity  to  which  social  heredity  appeals  and  which  it 
calls  into  play ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  instincts  are  the 
result,  in  their  method  of  acquisition  by  the  individual,  of 
natural  heredity ;  so  it  is  plain  from  the  simple  state- 
ment of  these  facts  that  the  two  kinds  of  heredity  are  in 
inverse  ratio  to  each  other.  The  insect  pays  dear,  there- 
fore, for  his  early  'start '  on  the  infant  toward  maturity ;  and 
the  infant  gets  a  royal  reward  for  the  toil  and  trouble  of 
his  early  months  and  years. 

It  is  interesting  also  to  note  as  another  way  of  consider- 
ing the  same  contrast  between  the  gifts  of  natural  heredity 
and  the  acquisitions  of  individual  life,  that  the  latter  in- 
volve the  presence  and  activity  of  a  very  high  form  of 
consciousness  as  contrasted  with  the  former.  In  order  to 
learn  to  do  new  things  with  his  hands,  for  instance,  the 
child  must  be  capable  of  wide-awake,  sustained  attention 
and  repeated  effort.  This  experience  of  effort,  with  the 
great  mental  concentration  which  it  requires,  is  about 


Social  Heredity  63 

the  most  acute  and  intense  experience  which  conscious 
beings  ever  know ;  and  if  we  describe  this  as  '  high,'  or 
personal,  or  strong,  consciousness,  then  on  examination 
we  find  that  the  reflex,  more  instinctive,  and  automatic 
processes  and  actions  are  lacking  in  it.  They  go  on  very 
largely  without  supervision  ;  they  do  not  even  require  at- 
tention ;  so  far  from  calling  out  effort,  they  are  in  many 
cases  not  brought  into  our  consciousness  at  all  until  they 
have  actually  been  performed.1  They  have  then  as  reactions 
very  'low,'  obscure,  weak  consciousness  attached  to  them. 
And  the  same  antithesis  holds  throughout  the  series  of 
organic  forms  in  the  animal  kingdom  ;  the  animals  which 
are  given  over  almost  altogether  to  instinctive  activities 
have  least  of  this  high  consciousness.  They  do  not  need 
the  assistance  of  conscious  effort  in  getting  adapted  to  the 
world,  since,  by  reason  of  their  inherited  adaptations,  they 
are  sufficiently  equipped  already  for  the  life  which  they  are 
to  lead. 

32.  Further,  the  same  distinction  has  its  counterpart  in 
the  nervous  system  and  its  variations  in  the  animal  series. 
The  reflex,  automatic,  and  instinctive  activities  are  regu- 
lated by  the  spinal  and  lower  cerebral  plexuses  ;  while  the 
higher  and  more  complex  activities  involving  conscious 
supervision,  volition,  and  all  that  is  involved  in  the  process 
of  the  learning  of  new  lines  of  action,  go  out  from  the  gray 
matter  of  the  cortex  of  the  brain.  This  gray  material 
represents  the  more  unstable  and  plastic  substance  ;  and  it 
is  in  the  organization  of  this  material  that  the  new  actions 
acquired  by  the  individual  in  his  lifetime  get  their  registra- 
tion. From  this  it  follows  as  an  easy  inference  that  the 

1  This  after-consciousness  of  the  effects  may  be  very  vivid  and  so  also  may 
the  stimulating  sensation  which  releases  the  instinct. 


64  The  Social  Person 

creature  which  is  born  with  most  of  this  unorganized  gray 
matter,  characteristic  of  the  brain,  will  be  the  creature 
capable  of  most  education  during  his  lifetime,  and  so 
capable  of  sustaining  the  most  complex  system  of  those 
social  relationships  which  call  this  process  of  acquisition 
into  play.  On  the  other  hand,  this  creature  will  also  lack 
the  elaborate  system  of  fixed  instinctive  actions  which  his 
less  brainy  rival  will  possess  ;  since  the  use  of  his  brain  in 
learning  requires  the  varied  and  free  use  of  muscle  and  limb 
brought  into  play  in  the  new  activities.  These  members 
then,  as  he  learns  to  use  them,  come  to  perform,  in  an  in- 
finitely more  varied  and  effective  way,  the  functions  of 
personal  life  performed  by  the  lower  creature's  instincts 
through  a  few  fixed  self-repeating  reactions. 

Plasticity,  therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  and  fixity,  on  the 
other  hand,  sum  up  the  differences  between  natural  and 
social  heredity  on  the  side  of  the  organism  ;  while  high  con- 
sciousness, seen  in  attention,  voluntary  imitation,  concentra- 
tion, on  the  one  hand,  and  low,  dreamy,  diffused,  subconscious 
processes,  on  the  other  hand,  serve  to  define  the  distinction 
on  the  side  of  the  mental  life  itself.1 

§  2.   Physical  Heredity  and  the  Social  Environment 

33.  With  so  much  attention  to  the  general  definition 
of  what  is  called  '  social  heredity,'  and  with  a  further  word 
of  emphasis  upon  the  phenomena  of  the  child's  develop- 

1  For  the  influence  of  '  Social  Heredity '  upon  organic  evolution,  and 
especially  its  bearings  on  the  questions  of  'Determinate  Variations'  and 
'The  Inheritance  of  Acquired  Characters,1  see  Appendix  A.  Later  on  in  this 
chapter  also  (Sects.  42,  43)  we  find  that  the  phrase  has  further  appropriate- 
ness from  the  direct  influence  which  social  conditions  have  upon  physical 
heredity  through  the  '  personal  selection  '  of  mates  in  matrimony. 


Physical  Heredity  and  Social  Environment     65 

ment  upon  which  the  doctrine  has  been  found  so  far  to 
rest,  we  may  now  turn  to  a  closer  examination  of  certain 
phases  of  the  topic  which  come  up  as  soon  as  we  attempt 
to  make  any  application  of  the  position  to  the  affairs  of 
mankind  at  large.  It  will  be  remembered  that  a  page  or 
two  back  I  had  occasion  to  say  that  even  the  so-called 
'  private  reference '  of  the  individual's  attainments  have, 
when  their  origin  is  in  question,  a  strain  of  'social  refer- 
ence '  as  well ;  and  that  even  the  instinctive  functions  of 
the  individual  creature — the  activities  which  seem  most 
private  of  all  —  are  in  an  important  sense  the  outcome 
of  social  race  conditions.  And  in  the  definitions  just 
given  the  same  point  appeared ;  the  statement  was 
made  that  in  each  case  there  are  two  factors  involved 
in  a  person's  equipment  :  his  physical  heredity  and  his 
social  heredity.  The  question  raised  by  these  remarks  is  the 
traditional  one  covered  by  the  antithesis  between  'heredity 
and  environment '  ;  and  while  the  discussion  which  follows 
will  be  found  not  out  of  touch  with  the  contributions  made 
to  this  topic  by  Galton  and  other  distinguished  investiga- 
tors, I  yet  hope  that  the  point  of  view  which  I  am  incor- 
porating in  the  doctrine  of  '  social  heredity  '  and  the  final 
view  that  we  get  of  the  human  '  socius,'  may  add  something 
of  more  or  less  value  to  the  elucidation  of  this  problem. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  by  environment  in  this  con- 
nection what  is  meant  is  social  environment.  The  question 
of  the  influence  of  the  physical  environment,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  biological  one,  involving  what  is,  in  an  exclusive 
sense,  the  private  business  of  the  organism,  its  private 
accommodations,  and  its  chances  of  selection  and  survival 
among  these  physical  conditions.  Here  we  have  a  distinc- 
tively human  problem  ;  and  in  case  we  take  a  man's  moral 


66  The  Social  Person 

stature  as  the  instance  for  investigation,  we  have  to  ask : 
What  elements  in  his  life  does  he  owe  to  his  association 
with  his  fellows,  and  what,  on  the  contrary,  does  he  owe  to 
his  physical  heredity  ?  This  is  the  first  question.  And  the 
second  is  like  unto  it :  What  part  of  his  physical  heredity 
does  he  owe  to  the  social  influences  in  which  his  father 
and  mother  lived  ?  Or,  seeing  that  such  social  influences 
would  act  in  great  measure  upon  all  the  individuals  alike, 
how  far  is  a  man's  physical  heredity  common  property  to 
others  with  himself  ? 

34.  The  first  of  these  questions  concerns  a  matter  of 
fact  which  we  have  had  already  before  us  in  our  investiga- 
tion of  the  child's  processes  of  learning  to  be  an  adult  man. 
Our  definitions  of  social  heredity  have  covered  just  the 
relation  to  which  this  question  refers.  The  growth  of 
human  personality  has  been  found  to  be  pre-eminently  a 
matter  of  social  suggestion.  The  material  from  which 
the  child  draws  is  found  in  the  store  of  accomplished 
activities,  forms,  patterns,  organizations,  etc.,  which  society 
already  possesses.  These  serve  as  ready  stimulating 
agencies,  loadstones  so  to  speak,  to  his  dawning  energies, 
to  draw  him  ever  on  in  his  career  of  growth  into  the  safe, 
sound,  useful  network  of  personal  acquisitions  and  social 
relationships  which  the  slow  progress  of  the  race  has  set 
in  permanent  form.  All  this  he  owes,  at  any  rate  in  the 
first  instance,  to  society.  His  business  is  to  be  teachable. 
He  must  have  the  plastic  nervous  substance  known  popu- 
larly as  a  brain ;  he  must  have  organs  of  sense  and  sufficient 
organic  equipment  to  enable  him  to  profit  by  the  methods 
of  personal  reaction  necessary  in  the  presence  of  his  social 
fellows ;  he  must  be  able  to  imitate,  to  attend,  to  invent. 
Taking  all  this  now  for  granted,  we  may  rest  in  this  matter- 


Physical  Heredity  and  Social  Environment     67 

of -fact  answer  to  the  first  of  our  questions  ;  and  so  formu- 
late a  statement  which  throws  the  burden  of  further  in- 
vestigation upon  the  other  problem  stated  above  ;  and  this 
with  the  less  hesitation  since  the  facts  are  not  generally  in 
question.  All  theories  will  admit  that  the  child  does  actu- 
ally begin  without  many  personal  acts  of  skill ;  and  that  he 
does  actually  learn  his  further  acts  of  skill  from  his  fellows ; 
moreover,  it  is  also  admitted  that  he  learns  in  the  long  run 
only  those  acts  of  skill  which  his  social  environment  already 
possesses  and  illustrates  before  him.  Even  when  he  learns 
more,  making  inventions  which  are  completely  new,  and 
so  instructing  his  associates,  instead  of  being  instructed  by 
them, it  is  by  some  variation  of  the  material  which  he  has 
learned  from  them,  and  is  an  invention  of  which  his  own 
and  their  social  judgment  is  liable  to  see  the  meaning  in 
terms  of  the  already  familiar  ways  of  action  of  the  social 
group.  Leaving  this  possible  case  of  the  genius  in  any 
case  for  a  later  discussion,  —  in  which  it  is  shown  that  the 
genius  does  not,  after  all,  escape  the  laws  of  human  prog- 
ress as  embodied  in  the  social  acquisitions  of  his  tribe  and 
time,  — we  may  now  consider  the  average  man,  and  pass 
on  to  the  next  inquiry.  This  I  have  put  in  alternative  terms 
above ;  we  may  take  the  more  social  emphasis  as  the  more 
critical,  and  discuss  the  form  of  it  stated  in  these  terms  : 
how  far  is  a  man's  heredity,  physical  and  social,  common 
property  in  the  community  in  which  he  is  born  ? 

35.  The  force  of  this  form  of  statement  is  seen  as  soon 
as  we  realize  the  terms  of  the  older  statement  which  con- 
trasted 'heredity'  sharply  with  'environment.'  If  that 
contrast  is  to  be  made  and  if  it  be  a  question  of  the  divi- 
sion of  a  man's  equipment  into  two  parts,  one  due  to  his 
endowment  or  physical  heredity,  and  the  other  due  to  his 


68  The  Social  Person 

environment,  there  is  no  question  of  a  third  category.  It 
supposes  that  these  two  agencies  are  opposed  forces,  and 
that  each  element  of  the  man's  entire  character  must  be 
due  to  one  or  the  other  of  them.  The  alternative,  that 
most  of  the  mans  equipment  is  due  to  both  causes  working 
together,  is  not  recognized  ;  and  the  resulting  dualism  or 
strife  between  the  two  supposed  influences  at  work  has 
no  way  of  reconciliation.  The  very  statement  of  the  ques- 
tion in  the  terms  given  above,  however,  is  itself  the  admis- 
sion of  such  a  third  category ;  and  we  should  expect,  if 
the  affirmative  answer  to  it  should  be  established  by  the 
facts,  that  a  modified  view  of  the  relation  of  these  two 
traditional  factors  would  be  justified.  For  we  should  then 
be  obliged,  in  some  degree  at  least,  to  identify  the  two 
influences  which  thus  serve  to  produce  results  in  com- 
mon, but  to  which  in  their  extreme  forms  we  give  differ- 
ent names. 

It  is  hardly  an  anticipation  to  the  reader  who  has  fol- 
lowed the  earlier  chapter  of  this  essay  to  say  that  it  is 
the  affirmative  answer  to  the  question  thus  stated  which 
seems  to  the  present  writer  to  result  from  an  adequate 
examination  of  the  facts  on  both  sides  or  on  either  side. 
And  it  is  to  the  presentation  of  the  evidence  of  this  that 
the  remainder  of  this  chapter  is  to  be  devoted,  as  far  as 
the  case  is  not  covered  by  the  classes  of  facts  already  pre- 
sented in  the  earlier  pages. 

36.  Taking  up  the  case  first  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  individual's  experience,  we  may  cite  the  evidence 
available  to  show  that  the  acquisitions  of  each  person  are 
constantly  made  by  slow  progress  toward  standards  of 
excellence  already  established  in  the  society  about  him. 
He  has  a  teacher  all  through  his  education  just  that  he 


Physical  Heredity  and  Social  Environment     69 

may  be  led  by  one  who  has  already  trodden  the  path  of 
development  upon  which  he  is  constantly  advancing  in 
his  own  personal  growth.  As  far,  therefore,  as  we  are 
concerned  in  tracing  the  method  of  that  more  formal 
training  covered  by  the  word  '  education/  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  we  may  safely  say,  as  an  element  in  our  conclu- 
sion, that  what  the  individual  learns,  the  teachers  of  that 
individual  have  also  learned  —  some  more,  some  less;  so 
that  it  is  true  that  the  social  heredity  which  thus  bears 
in  upon  the  one,  has  before  borne  in  upon  the  others  by 
a  similar  process  of  teaching;  and  the  elements  of  social 
inheritance  which  each  gets  in  his  education  are  common 
to  the  group  in  which  he  is  reared.  This  holds  of  the 
great  sphere  of  personal  accomplishment  represented  by 
literature,  art,  the  established  forms  of  social  organization, 
etc.,  which  are  made  a  formal  part  of  the  instruction  of 
children  and  youth. 

In  the  same  manner,  also,  do  we  find  the  child  learning 
those  more  fundamental  activities  which  serve,  in  our  later 
phrase,  as  'social  aids  to  invention.'1  Speech,  reading, 
writing,  the  elements  of  correct  personal  deportment  in 
the  family,  in  the  school,  in  social  gatherings,  etc.,— 
these  are  impressed  upon  him,  even  by  force  if  he  show 
any  reluctance  or  incapacity  to  take  them  in  of  himself. 
The  most  direct  and  severe  punishments  are  laid  down 
for  breaches  of  social  etiquette  in  the  family  and  school 
discipline  of  the  youth.  And  all  this,  of  course,  being  so 
fundamental  to  the  existence  of  the  social  organization  of 
men  together,  has  also  been  learned  by  the  parents  in 
much  the  same  way,  and  under  much  the  same  social 
sanctions  as  the  next  generation  after  them.  So  again 
1  Cf.  Chap.  IV.  • 


70  T/ie  Social  Person 

we  may  say  that  with  regard  to  these  more  definite  and 
stereotyped  utilities  of  social  life,  it  is  true  that  the  single 
individuals  get  them  similarly,  and  what  is  true  of  one 
such  person  is  true  in  its  main  lines  of  all. 

The  only  other  sphere  of  personal  influence  of  man  upon 
man  is  that  which  may  be  represented  by  the  current 
phrase  'unconscious'  influence,  to  which,  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  obviously  typified  by  the  more  or  less  approximate 
reproduction  of  opinions,  styles,  etc.,  of  one  person  in 
others,  the  name  '  plastic  imitation '  was  given  in  my  ear- 
lier work.  All  influence  of  this  unconscious  kind  is  clearly 
to  be  classified  under  the  term  '  suggestion ' ;  and  inas- 
much as  it  notoriously  belongs  in  that  department  of  col- 
lective psychology  which  finds  its  most  striking  instances 
in  the  matters  where  social  opinion  is  most  acute  and 
social  criticism  most  dreaded,  it  is  no  stretch  of  evidence 
to  say  that,  as  for  the  learning  of  the  individual  in  these 
unconscious  ways,  it  is  common,  par  excellence,  to  the 
whole  social  group. 

37.  Having  now  gone  so  far,  we  are  at  once  confronted 
with  the  following  state  of  things :  Here  are  a  number  of 
beings  all  pursuing  the  same  activities  in  a  system  of  re- 
markably complex  relationships  with  one  another.  Each 
one  in  turn  has  been  born  with  none  of  these  activities  in 
any  advanced  state  of  development ;  but  has  depended  — 
by  the  inflexible  conditions  of  his  organic  make-up — upon 
finding  just  this  system  of  relationships  there  beforehand, 
prepared  to  hail,  embrace,  and  educate  him.  All  were 
born  helpless ;  all  have  been  educated.  Each  has  been 
taught ;  each  is  to  become  a  teacher.  Each  learns  new 
things  by  doing  what  he  sees  others  do ;  and  each  im- 
proves on  what  the  other  does  only  by  doing  what  he  has 


Social  Suppression  of  the   Unfit  71 

already  learned.  Each  teaches  simply  by  doing,  and  each 
rules  the  others  by  his  example.  This,  it  will  be  re- 
membered, is  the  state  of  things  when  we  consider  soci- 
ety as  an  organization  of  common  men ;  we  have  left  the 
consideration  of  the  candidates  for  the  great  name  of 
genius  over  for  separate  treatment. 

§  3.    Social  Suppression  of  the  Unfit 

What  shall  we  then  say  about  the  physical  heredity 
of  these  toiling,  playing,  teaching,  learning  individuals? 
What  must  we  say? 

The  very  least  we  can  say  seems  to  me  worth  saying ; 
for  its  bearings  are  in  some  respects  critical  for  the 
theory  of  society,  (i)  The  individual  must  be  born  to 
learn;  and  (2)  all  the  individuals  must  be  born  to  learn 
the  same  things. 

This  may  seem  but  the  statement  of  platitudes ;  but 
their  commonplace  character  indicates  their  truth.  For, 
as  commonplace  as  they  are,  and  as  true  as  the  common- 
place character  of  them  would  lead  us  to  expect,  they  are 
still  the  two  points  upon  which,  as  I  think,  the  entire 
system  of  truths  in  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  his 
kind  depend.  Their  importance  may  be  seen  from  the 
remark  that  the  historical  development  of  social  and  eco- 
nomic theory  which  goes  by  the  name  of  '  Individualism  ' J 
directly  contradicts  them.  I  need  not  stop  to  make  good 
this  statement  now ;  our  later  outcome  involves  it :  but 
the  more  immediate  bearings  of  the  principles  before  us 
will  suffice  to  show  their  meaning. 

38.    I.  Man  is  born  to  learn :  how  does  this  define  his 

J  Defined  strictly  in  opposition  to  '  Collectivism.' 


72  The  Social  Person 

physical  heredity  ?     It  defines  it  in  several  ways,  and   I 
shall  try  to  make  them  cumulative  in  their  statement. 

If  a  creature  is  to  come  into  the  world  fitted  to  learn, 
he  must  not  —  to  state  a  negative  requirement  —  /if  must 
not  have  hereditary  tendencies  which  ivill  make  him  anti- 
social, to  wliat  may  be  called  a  snppressive  degree.  This 
means  simply  that  he  must  not  develop  activities  or  per- 
sonal qualities  so  counter  to  the  true  line  of  conformity 
to  the  teachings  and  relationships  of  the  common  social 
milieu,  that  society  and  other  individuals  will  not  let  him 
live  to  do  them  harm,  or  to  set  them  a  bad  example.  What 
these  actions  and  qualities  are  which  an  individual  must 
not  be  born  to  perform,  it  is  not  necessary  to  define  in 
detail.  That  is  for  the  particular  society  to  say  ;  and  his- 
torically different  societies  have  said  many  things  very 
different  in  detail.  It  is  for  the  community  to  say ;  and 
that  is  only  another  way  of  stating  the  point  already  made, 
that  the  other  element  of  the  person's  entire  equipment 
is  the  common  social  standard  of  the  '  social  heredity '  of 
the  group.  Society  it  is  which  addresses  the  anti-social 
man,  saying  to  him  :  "  Dear  sir,  your  physical  heredity  has 
overstepped  its  bounds  ;  to  tolerate  you  and  men  like  you 
would  endanger  the  social  heritage  which  our  fathers  have 
given  us  ;  you  must  go.  You  have  the  making  of  a  crimi- 
nal, and  although  we  may  have  to  wait  till  your  potencies 
actually  show  you  up  a  criminal,  still,  as  far  as  in  us  lies, 
criminals  shall  be  suppressed." 

I  know  that  there  are  several  questions  which  may  arise 
in  the    mind  of   the    reader — especially  the  biologist  - 
regarding   this   formulation.     One  of  them  concerns  the 
standards  of  society  with  reference  to  which  its  judgments 
are  rendered.      Another  concerns  the  sphere  of  possible 


Social  Suppression  of  the   Unfit  73 

variations  in  the  social  worth  of  individuals  with  reference 
to  this  standard ;  this  I  can  only  define  here  by  the  relative 
limitation  indicated  by  the  phrase  'suppressive  degree.' 
And  then,  of  course,  the  biologist  rushes  in  with  the  ques- 
tion what  relation  this  term  '  suppressive '  bears  to  natural 
selection  1  in  the  organic  world.  The  general  relation  of 
social  facts  to  organic  facts  cannot  be  profitably  discussed 
in  this  connection  ;  but  the  remarks  which  follow  in  eluci- 
dation of  the  'suppressive  degree'  which  the  individual's 
anti-social  tendencies  may  not  reach  may  serve  to  quiet 
the  oversensibilities  of  the  biological  enthusiast  at  this 
point. 

39.  But  before  we  go  further,  it  may  be  well  to  illus- 
trate the  method  which  society  adopts  to  suppress  the 
individual  who  is  unfit.  I  have  said  that  the  level  of 
social  heredity  of  the  group  or  society,  as  a  whole,  repre- 
sents the  voice  of  this  society  in  pronouncing  sentence 
upon  its  unworthy  members.  This,  in  our  developed 
society,  is  embodied  in  the  real  institutions  and  laws 
which  aim  at  the  correction,  isolation,  and  punishment  of 
the  social  offender.  If  a  man  is  born  with  too  strong  an 
egoistic  tendency,  with,  let  us  say,  uncontrollable  passions, 
with  abnormal  emotions,  such  as  jealousy,  malice,  unre- 
flective  self-assertion,  or  what-not  of  tendency  which,  when 
he  grows  up,  leads  him  to  commit  crime,  the  arm  of  society, 
acting  through  its  institutions  of  justice,  takes  up  his  case. 
If  you  kill,  say  the  people  in  most  instances,  you  shall  be 


1  The  biologists  say  that  a  character  has  a  'selective  degree'  of  utility 
when  its  utility  is  sufficient  to  preserve  the  life  of  the  animal  possessing  it,  in 
the  '  struggle  for  existence.'  The  phrases  '  suppressive  degree '  and  '  suppres-*- 
sion  of  the  unfit '  used  in  the  text  suggest  a  parallel  which  will  become  clearer 
as  we  proceed. 


74  The  Social  Person 

killed  ;  and  he  is.  If  he  shows  by  his  thefts  that  he  has 
a  strain  of  heredity  which  leads  him  to  disregard  the 
claims  of  society  to  the  mutual  respect  of  property-rights 
as  society  defines  them,  then  he  must  be  put  where  he  can 
find  no  property,  says  the  social  spirit ;  and  he  is.  If  he 
is  born  with  an  intellectual  nature  out  of  proportion  to  his 
social  nature,  and  thinks  to  circumvent  the  regulations  of 
the  social  spirit  by  wily  cunning  and  well-laid  schemes, 
then  society  seeks  one  who  is  as  smart  as  he  and  more 
loyal,  to  track  him  out,  that  he  too  may  be  socially  sup- 
pressed. And  so  the  cases  go.  Society  it  is  that  formu- 
lates in  what  we  call  laws  the  truths  which  it  knows  about 
itself ;  and  society  it  is  that  says  in  this  case  or  that : 
'  You  have  proved  yourself  anti-social  and  you  must  leave 
society.'  So  what  we  have  to  say  about  the  negative  sort 
of  selection  called  '  social  suppression  '  may  take  its  point 
of  departure  here. 

40.  It  is  probably  clear  to  the  reader  from  these  illus- 
trations what  is  meant  by  suppression  in  this  social  realm. 
Certain  individuals  are  singled  out  or  selected  for  special 
treatment.  The  great  peculiarity  of  this  negative  selection 
is  that  it  selects  the  most  unfit  rather  tlian  tlic  most  fit,  and 
instead  of  selecting  for  preservation,  it  selects  to  remove  or 
to  destroy.  In  the  organic  world  it  is  the  organic  causes 
themselves  which  work  with  the  environment  to  secure 
a  race  progressively  better  as  individuals  ;  in  the  social 
world  it  is  the  social  whole  which  applies  social  criteria 
for  the  eradication  of  what  is  harmful.  This  contrast  may 
be  pointed  out  here,  simply  to  clear  up  the  meaning  of  the 
concept  of  social  suppression ;  not  to  exhaust  the  biological 
analogy  from  natural  selection  ;  for  there  are  other  phases, 
both  of  contrast  and  of  similarity  between  the  two  kinds 


Social  Suppression  of  the   Unfit  75 

of  selection,  which  would  demand  more  extended  treat- 
ment.1 

Understanding,  then,  that  we  are  dealing  with  the  social 
selection  of  the  unfit  with  a  view  to  their  suppression,  we 
have  to  ask,  farther,  what  constitutes  the  '  suppressive 
degree'  of  unfitness?  This  question  we  will  find  answered 
in  the  second  clause  of  our  formulation  of  the  kind  of 
natural  heredity  which  the  eligible  social  personality  must 
have ;  and  further  remarks  may  be  made  under  the  con- 
sideration of  that  factor.  I  have  stated  it  above  in  these 
words  :  'All  must  be  born  to  learn  the  same  things' 

41.  This  is  the  second  positive  requirement.  It  sets 
the  level  of  social  attainment  in  the  community  in  which 
each  individual  is  born.  The  social  inheritance  is  not  an 
arbitrary  requirement  devised  by  an  individual,  nor  by  a 

1  The  various  cases  of  natural  and  other  selection  need  more  discrimination 
than  biologists  usually  give  them.  In  a  changing  environment  or  where  com- 
petition is  sharp,  natural  selection  'selects'  the  fittest  (Darwin,  Spencer);  while 
in  a  stationary  environment  or  where  competition  is  lax  or  adaptation  gen- 
eral and  good,  only  the  very  unfit  are  eliminated  (Eimer).  Both  of  these  are 
always  at  work,  and  every  degree  of  selection  is  found  between  these  extremes. 
So  general  contrasts  are  unsafe.  For  example,  the  contrast  made  by  Pro- 
fessor Lloyd  Morgan  {Habit  and  Instinct,  Chap.  XII.),  who  thinks  'conscious 
selection '  selects  the  best,  while  natural  selection  eliminates  the  poorest,  is  true 
only  under  certain  well-defined  conditions.  The  working  of '  social  suppres- 
sion,' for  example,  is  quite  the  reverse  of  what  he  attributes  to  '  conscious 
selection,'  although  it  is  '  conscious.'  There  is  a  conscious  selection  of  the 
best  going  on  in  society,  both  of  individuals  and  of  experiences,  thoughts, 
plans,  ideals;  these  might  be  called  respectively  'social  selection'  (through 
competition),  and 'imitative  selection'  (through  the  imitative  propagation  of 
ideas  from  person  to  person).  Cf.  Sects.  120,  305  f.  And  there  is  also  another 
form  of  conscious  selection,  of  person  by  person  where  preference  and  liking 
or  aversion  of  whatever  kind  come  in,  as  seen  conspicuously  in  matrimony, 
spoken  of  immediately  below  (Sects.  42,  43),  which  is  not  of  the  best,  but  of 
what  may  be  described  as  the  'socially  available.'  This  might  be  called  'per- 
sonal selection,'  leaving  '  sexual  selection '  to  the  animals,  where  immediate 
reproduction  is  the  motive.  See  note  to  Sect.  307,  and  Appendix  B. 


76  The  Social  Person 

class ;  nor  is  it  a  convention  by  which  each  or  any  indi- 
vidual agrees  to  give  up  his  so-called  private  rights.  On 
the  contrary,  there  is  a  possible  standard  of  general  recog- 
nition, and  a  possible  recognition  of  the  existing  standard 
with  social  progress  in  both  of  these,  only  in  so  far  as  the 
physical  heredity  of  the  individual  sets  toward  the  learn- 
ing of  just  the  sort  and  variety  of  relationships  which 
the  social  tradition  imposes.  A  community  is  impossible 
in  which  the  majority  are  born  so  anti-social  that  they 
resist  the  social  tradition  or  cannot  absorb  it ;  since  the 
factor  of  personal  heredity,  tending  to  individual  idiosyn- 
crasy, would  then  swamp  the  factor  of  social  heredity,  tend- 
ing to  social  organization.  The  principle  of  '  suppression 
of  the  unfit '  would  cease  its  operation  ;  there  would  be  no 
established  representative  of  social  utility  to  prevent  the 
indulgence  of  the  personal  as  against  the  social  factor, 
and  society  would  be  ipso  facto  abolished.  Such  a  state 
of  things  is  in  sight  in  the  opinion  of  Max  Norclau  :  the 
physical  heredity  of  the  degenerate  represents  a  strain  of 
social  decay,  and  the  appeal  must  be  made  to  the  possible 
existence  of  a  larger  community  whose  physical  heredity 
is  still  so  unified  in  its  tendencies  that  its  representatives 
keep  alive  the  social  tradition,  and  so  select  out  and  frown 
down  —  or  print  down,  to  adopt  the  method  of  the  prophet, 
Herr  Nordau  —  the  degenerates  by  birth. 

In  saying,  therefore,  that  in  any  social  community  the 
natural  heredity  of  the  individuals  must  be  such  that  they 
all  may  learn  the  same  things,  I  simply  mean  that  the 
limits  of  individual  variation  must  lie  inside  the  possible 
attainment  of  the  social  heritage  by  each  person.  In  the 
actual  attainment  of  this  ideal  any  society  finds  itself 
embarrassed  by  refractory  individuals,  all  too  numerous  ; 


Social  Suppression  of  the   Unfit  *jy 

the  variations  which  overrun  these  limits  are  always 
many.  But  social  progress  and  even  social  stability  de- 
mand that  this  tendency  to  chaos  shall  never  actually 
annul  the  operation  of  the  requirement  which  represents 
the  social  life  as  such.  It  is  the  duty  of  each  individual 
to  be  born  a  man  of  the  social  tendencies  which  his  com- 
munal tradition  requires  of  him  ;  if  he  persist  in  being 
born  a  different  sort  of  man,  then,  as  far  as  his  varia- 
tion goes,  he  is  liable  to  be  found  a  criminal  before  the 
bar  of  public  conscience  and  law,  and  to  be  suppressed 
in  an  asylum  or  a  reformatory,  in  Siberia  or  in  the  potter's 
field. 

42.  I  think  we  are  able  now  to  see  somewhat  more 
clearly  the  relation  of  the  two  factors  ordinarily  called 
heredity  and  environment.  Apart  from  the  presence  of 
variations,  they  are  both  common  property.  For  the 
natural  heredity  of  the  individual  must  in  its  develop- 
ment lift  the  individual  into  participation  in  the  social 
store  and  in  the  tradition  administered  by  the  organization 
called  the  environment ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  envi- 
ronment, being  only  the  general  sphere  of  the  operation 
of  the  collective  heredities  of  the  individuals  and  of  their 
fathers,  must  draw  out,  confirm,  establish,  the  individual 
in  these  natural  inherited  tendencies  which  all  have  in 
common.  The  social  influences  which  act  upon  the 
individual,  therefore,  do  not  and  cannot  represent,  in  the 
language  of  a  recent  writer,1  'a  cycle  of  causation'  quite 
apart  from  that  represented  by  the  physiological  processes 
which  operate  in  physical  heredity.  They  constitute,  it 
is  true,  separate  spheres  of  causation;  we  cannot  substi- 
tute a  social  cause  for  a  physical  cause,  or  the  reverse. 

i  William  James,  Atlantic  Monthly,  1888. 


78  The  Social  Person 

But  they  are  not  disparate,  in  the  sense  that  each  runs  its 
course  without  interference  from  the  other ;  on  the  con- 
trary, social  life  acts  as  a  constant  check  upon  '  sports  '  as 
such,  and  upon  unsocial  hereditary  tendencies  in  general.1 

43.  But  not  only  is  there  this  suppression  of  the  unfit 
individuals  after  they  are  born,  and  the  consequent  check- 
ing of  their  influence  both  physical  and  moral ;  there  is  a 
more  direct  interference  of  social  with  physical  heredity. 
The  sphere  of  physical  heredity  is  encroached  upon,  and 
the  direction  of  its  issue  changed,  by  every  influence  in 
the  environment  which  comes  to  throw  possible  parents 
together  or  to  separate  them  ;  and  these  influences  are 
often  the  social  barriers  or  inducements  which  the  '  social 
environment '  prescribes. 

This  I  may  illustrate  by  an  example.  In  the  southern 
United  States  there  is  a  social  barrier  to  the  intermarriage 
of  blacks  and  whites.  It  is  part  of  the  unwritten  law  of 
polite  society.  The  result  is  that  there  continue  to  be  a 
white  population  and  a  black  population  existing  side  by 
side,  the  mixed  element  of  the  population  being  for  the 
most  part  of  illegitimate  origin  from  black  females.  This 
keeps  the  white  race  pure,  while  there  is  a  growing  race 
of  mulattoes  and  a  diminishing  race  of  blacks.  The 
cycles  of  causation  represented  by  these  different  races 
are  distinctly  held  in  physical  bounds  by  the  social  cycle. 
Suppose,  on  the  contrary,  a  generation  of  whites  should 
be  born  who  should  forget  the  social  sentiment  now  ex- 
isting, or  that  a  sufficient  number  of  Northern  whites, 
who  do  not  regard  such  a  barrier,  should  migrate  to  the 
South  and  marry  freely  with  the  blacks  ;  then  the  only 

1  At  the  same  time  it  may  well  be  an  undertaking  of  the  social  reformer  to 
render  this  sort  of  control  much  more  effective. 


Social  Suppression  of  the  Unfit  79 

future  society  would  be  one  of  legitimate  mulattoes.  In 
this  case  we  should  have  to  say  that  the  series  of  terms 
representing  the  causes  and  effects  in  the  physiological 
cycle  had  become  different  simply  from  a  change  in  social 
sentiment,  or  from  the  inrush  of  men  and  women  of  dif- 
ferent social  heredity.  It  is  not  needful  to  cite  instances 
from  history,  although  many  might  be  cited ;  for  the 
reasons  already  suggested  for  believing  that  neither  series 
of  phenomena  can  be  free  from  constant  action  and  re- 
action with  the  other  are  sufficiently  convincing.  It  is 
only  necessary  to  put  a  single  corollary  in  a  little  clearer 
evidence  to  make  the  bearing  of  this  identity  of  tendency 
in  the  two  orders  of  heredity  quite  clear,  for  the  average 
activities  of  ordinary  individuals. 

44.  This  general  corollary,  or  rather  restatement,  of  a 
position  already  reached  in  our  study,  concerns  the  individ- 
ual, considered  as  one  in  a  number  —  the  same,  therefore, 
being  true  of  each  —  who  live  and  act  together  in  society. 
It  concerns  the  results  of  his  social  learning  all  the  way 
along  through  the  different  stages  of  his  education  for  his 
place  and  work  in  life.  These  results,  at  whatever  age 
or  in  whatever  condition  we  find  the  person,  must  mean 
that  he  has  substantially  the  same  standards  of  social 
value,  personal  and  ethical  worth,  and  in  general  the  same 
sense  of  fitness  in  all  the  variety  of  meanings  which  this 
term  can  have  in  its  application  to  human  beings,  their 
institutions,  and  their  inventions,  which  he  finds  reflected 
also  in  the  social  group  in  which  he  moves.  His  opinion 
of  others  must  be  referred  to  the  same  standards  by  which 
he  judges  himself;  and  their  opinion  of  him  must,  for  the 
same  reasons,  agree  with  his,  in  both  these  directions  of  its 
application.  This  is  the  saving  rule  of  all  organizations 


8o  The  Social  Person 

of  a  social  kind  which  have  any  call  to  live.  For  if  we 
admit  that  the  average  individual's  judgments  are  in  the 
main  and  intrinsically  at  variance  with  the  social  judg- 
ments of  his  time  and  place,  how  can  there  be  any  social 
judgments?  For  the  social  judgment  is  in  some  way  the 
judgment  of  the  individuals,  acting  in  a  social  way ;  and 
if  there  be  no  area  of  common  judgment  among  the  indi- 
viduals, then  there  can  be  in  so  far  no  social  standards. 
This  follows  without  doubt  from  the  considerations  already 
adduced  concerning  the  respective  limits  of  social  and 
physical  heredity. 

45.  It  also  follows  from  another  line  of  considerations 
which  have  been  presented  at  some  length.  I  refer  to 
the  method  of  growth  of  the  individual  in  attaining  his 
sense  of  himself  as  a  personal  and  social  agent.  His 
progress,  i.e.,  the  child's,  has  been  dwelt  upon  at  some 
length  just  to  make  clear  this  point,  —  his  absolute  de- 
pendence upon  the  continual  presence  of  suitable  personal 
environment.  These  suggestions  which  come  to  him  from 
others  are  realized  in  himself,  and  his  thought  of  another 
is  —  not  stands  for,  or  represents,  or  anything  else  than 
is — his  thought  of  himself,  until  he  adds  to  it  a  further 
interpretation  ;  the  further  interpretation  is  in  turn,  first 
himself,  then  is  —  again  nothing  short  of  this  is  —  his 
thought  of  the  other.  And  so  the  play  goes  on,  and  so 
he  grows.  But  all  the  while  here  is  the  essential  thing  : 
he  has  not  two  persons  to  think  of,  his  ego  and  the  other 
man's,  the  alter;  not  at  all.  He  has  only  one  body  of 
personal  data.  This  he  reads  one  way  for  himself  and 
the  other  way  for  the  other.  And  so  how  can  he  have 
two  classes  of  judgments  to  pass  upon  this  one  personal 
thought  ?  In  condemning,  approving,  loving,  hating,  com- 


Social  Suppression  of  the   Unfit  81 

mending,  reviling,  —  in  all  the  judgments  passed  on  per- 
sonality as  such,  —  he  criticises  personality,  and  all  he  says 
holds  for  himself  as  for  his  neighbour ;  for  the  two  selves 
are  but  terms  of  opposition  in  the  movement  of  his  per- 
sonal growth.  And  this  is  true  of  the  other  man's  per- 
sonal growth  as  well ;  so  he  must  also  include  my  person 
in  his  judgments.  His  personal  data  are  identical  in  the 
main  with  those  by  which  I  grow.  His  judgments,  then, 
both  of  himself  and  of  me,  must  be  in  the  main  the  same 
as  my  judgments  both  of  myself  and  of  him.1 

46.  So  the  conclusion  seems  quite  safe.  It  follows 
both  from  the  theory  of  social  heredity,  and  also  from 
the  theory  of  the  individual's  personal  growth.  This 
collateral  argumentation  is  in  itself  the  strongest  proof 
of  the  truth  of  the  conclusion.  For  it  is  the  first  re- 
quirement of  a  theory  of  society  that  it  shall  have  ade- 
quate views  of  the  progress  of  the  social  whole,  which  shall 
be  consistent  with  the  psychology  of  the  individual's  per- 
sonal growth.  It  is  this  requirement,  I  think,  which  has 
kept  the  science  of  society  so  long  in  its  infancy  ;  or,  at 
least,  this  in  part.  Psychologists  have  not  had  sufficient 
genetic  theory  to  use  on  their  side  ;  and  what  theory  they 
had  seemed  to  forbid  any  attempt  to  interpret  social  prog- 
ress in  its  categories.  As  soon  as  we  come  to  see,  how- 
ever, that  the  growth  of  the  individual  does  not  forbid  this 
individual's  taking  part  in  the  larger  social  movement  as 
well,  and,  moreover,  reach  the  view  that  in  his  growth  he 
is  at  once  also  growing  into  the  social  whole,  and  in  so  far 
aiding  its  further  evolution  —  then  we  seem  to  have  found 
a  bridge  on  which  it  is  safe  to  travel,  and  from  which  we 
can  get  vistas  of  the  country  on  both  sides. 

1  This  anticipates  detailed  conclusions  reached  later  on. 
G 


82  The  Social  Person 

§  4.    Social  Variations 

47.  Ever  since  Darwin  propounded  the  principle  of 
'natural  selection,'  the  word  'variation'  has  been  current. 
The  student  in  natural  science  has  come  to  look  for  varia- 
tions as  the  necessary  preliminary  to  any  new  step  of 
progress  and  adaptation  in  the  sphere  of  organic  life. 
Nature  solves  the  problem  of  selection  in  the  simplest  of 
ways.  The  young  born  in  the  same  family  are  naturally 
unlike  ;  '  variations  '  occur.  If  all  cannot  live,  the  best  of 
the  variations  live,  and  the  others  die.  Those  that  do  live 
have  thus,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  been  '  selected.' 

Now,  this  way  of  looking  at  problems  which  involve 
aggregates  of  individuals  and  their  distribution  is  becom- 
ing a  habit  of  the  age.  Wherever  the  application  of  the 
principles  of  probability  do  not  explain  a  statistical  result, 
—  that  is,  wherever  there  seem  to  be  influences  which 
favour  particular  individuals  at  the  expense  of  others,  — 
men  turn  at  once  to  the  principle  of  variations  for  the 
justification  of  this  seeming  partiality  of  nature.  And 
what  it  means  is  that  nature  is  partial  to  individuals  in 
making  them,  in  their  natural  endowment,  rather  than 
after  they  are  born. 

Of  course  the  resources  of  this  doctrine  of  variations 
are  available  for  social  questions  in  so  far  as  natural  inheri- 
tance is  still  the  bridge  from  generation  to  generation  of 
social  men.  However  we  may  limit  the  influence  of  physi- 
cal transmission  and  emphasize  that  of  social  transmission, 
yet  the  great  fact  that  men  are  born  dissimilar,  mentally 
and  morally  as  well  as  physically,  must  have  a  place  in 
all  theories  of  social  life.  A  word  may  be  in  order  here  in 
the  way  of  description  of  some  of  the  more  marked  social 
variations. 


Social  Variations  83 

48.  First,  there  is  the  idiot.  He  is  not  available,  from 
a  social  point  of  view,  because  his  variation  is  too  great 
on  the  side  of  defect.  He  shows  from  infancy  that  he  is 
unable  to  enter  into  the  social  heritage  because  he  cannot 
learn  to  do  social  things.  His  intelligence  does  not  grow 
with  his  body.  Society  pities  him  if  he  be  without  natural 
protection,  and  puts  him  away  in  an  institution.  So  of 
the  insane,  the  pronounced  lunatic  ;  he  cannot  consistently 
sustain  the  wide  system  of  social  relationships  which 
society  requires  of  each  adult  individual.  Either  he  is 
unable  to  take  care  of  himself,  or  he  attempts  the  life  of 
some  one  else,  or  he  is  the  harmless  unsocial  thing  who 
wanders  among  us  like  an  animal,  or  stands  in  his  place 
like  a  plant.  He  is  not  a  factor  in  social  life ;  he  is  not 
to  share  the  inheritance. 

Then  there  is  the  extraordinary  class  of  people  whom 
we  may  describe  by  a  stronger  term  than  those  already 
employed.  We  find  not  only  the  unsocial,  the  negatively 
unfit,  those  whom  society  excludes  with  pity  in  its  heart ; 
but  there  are  also  the  anti-social,  the  class  whom  we  usually 
designate  as  criminals.  These  persons,  like  the  others,  are 
variations  ;  but  they  seem  to  be  variations  in  quite  another 
way.  They  do  not  represent  lack  on  the  intellectual  side, 
always  or  alone,  but  on  the  moral  side,  on  the  social  side, 
as  such ;  for  morality  is  in  its  origin  and  practical  bear- 
ings a  social  thing.  The  least  we  can  say  of  the  criminals, 
is  that  they  tend  by  heredity,  or  by  evil  training,  to  violate 
the  rules  which  society  has  seen  fit  to  lay  down  for  the 
general  security  of  men  acting  together  in  the  enjoyment 
of  the  social  heritage.  So  far,  then,  they  are  factors  of 
disintegration,  of  destruction  ;  enemies  of  the  social  prog- 
ress which  proceeds  from  generation  to  generation  by 


84  The  Social  Person 

just  this  process  of  social  heredity.  So  society  says  to  the 
criminal,  also,  '  you  must  perish.'  We  kill  off  the  worst  of 
them,  imprison  the  bad  for  life,  attempt  to  reform  the  rest. 
They  too,  then,  are  excluded  from  the  heritage  of  the  past. 
Then  finally,  with  all  these,  and  with  the  countless  cases  of 
less  prominent  variation  in  one  direction  or  another,  we 
find  a  type  of  variation  which,  though  taking  different 
forms,  presents  one  of  the  most  critical  and  interesting 
topics  of  social  study,  the  genius.  With  him  we  have  to 
deal  later  on. 

§  5.    Social  Judgment 

49.  There  grows  up,  in  all  the  interchange  of  sugges- 
tion among  you,  me,  and  the  others,  in  all  the  give-and-take 
between  us  now  described,  an  obscure  sense  of  a  certain 
social  understanding  about  ourselves  generally  —  of  a.  Zeit- 
geist, an  atmosphere,  a  taste,  or,  in  minor  matters,  a  style. 
It  is  a  very  peculiar  thing,  this  social  spirit.  The  best 
way  to  understand  that  you  have  it,  or  something  of  what 
it  is,  is  to  get  into  a  circle  in  which  it  is  different.  The 
common  phrase  'fish  out  of  water  '  is  often  heard  in  refer- 
ence to  it.  But  that  does  not  serve  for  science.  The 
next  best  thing  that  I  can  do  in  the  way  of  a  preliminary 
rendering  of  it  is  to  appeal  to  another  word  which  has  a 
popular  sense,  the  word  'judgment.'  Let  us  say  that  there 
exists  in  every  society  a  general  system  of  values,  found 
in  social  usages,  conventions,  institutions,  and  formulas, 
and  that  our  'judgments'  of  social  life  are  founded  on  our 
habitual  recognition  of  these  values,  and  of  the  arrange- 
ment of  them  which  has  become  more  or  less  fixed  in  our 
society.  For  example,  to  say  '  you  are  welcome '  to  a  dis- 
agreeable neighbour,  shows  good  social  judgment  in  a  small 


Social  Judgment  85 

matter.  Not  to  quarrel  with  the  homoeopathic  enthusiast 
who  meets  you  in  the  street  and  wishes  to  doctor  your 
rheumatism  out  of  a  symptom  book  —  that  is  good  judg- 
ment. In  short,  the  man  gets  to  show  more  and  more,  as 
he  grows  up  from  childhood,  a  certain  good  judgment ;  and 
his  good  judgment  is  also  the  good  judgment  of  his  social 
set,  community,  or  nation.  The  psychologist  might  prefer 
to  say  that  a  man  '  feels '  this ;  perhaps  it  would  be  better 
for  psychological  readers  to  say  simply  that  he  has  a 
'  sense '  of  it ;  but  the  popular  use  of  the  word  '  judgment ' 
fits  so  accurately  into  the  line  of  distinctions  I  am  making 
that  I  shall  adhere  to  it.  And  so  we  reach  the  general 
position  that  the  eligible  candidate  for  social  life  must  have 
good  judgment,  as  represented  by  the  common  standards 
of  judgment  of  his  people.1 

It  may  be  doubted,  however,  whether  this  sense  of  social 
values  is  the  outcome  of  suggestion  operating  through- 
out the  term  of  one's  social  education.  That  we  have 
endeavoured  to  show  in  the  earlier  chapter  on  the  child's 
personal  growth.  It  will  appear  true,  I  trust,  to  any  one 
who  may  take  the  pains  to  observe  the  child's  tentative 
endeavours  to  act  up  to  the  social  usages  of  the  family  and 
school.  One  may  then  actually  see  the  growth  of  the  sort 
of  judgment  which  I  am  describing.  Around  the  funda- 
mental movement  of  his  personal  growth  all  the  values  of 

1  "  An  interesting  phenomenon  under  this  head  is  that  usually  described 
as  the  influence  of  example  on  personal  belief.  What  we  call  persuasion  is 
largely  the  suggestion  of  the  emotion  which  accompanies  strong  conviction, 
with  the  corresponding  influence  which  the  emotion  suggested  has  upon  the 
logical  relationships  apprehended  by  the  victim."  —  Baldwin,  Mind,  Jan., 
1894,  p.  50.  Later  discussions  show  in  more  exact  terms  what  this  implies 
psychologically.  The  statement  in  the  text  is  preliminary  and  purely  objec- 
tive. Cf.  Chap.  III.,  §§  i,  3. 


86  The  Social  Person 

his  life  have  their  play.  So  I  say  that  his  sense  of  truth 
regarding  the  social  relationships  of  his  environment  is  the 
outcome  of  his  very  gradual  learning  of  his  personal  place 
in  these  relationships. 

50.  We  reach  the  conclusion,  therefore,  from  this  part  of 
our  study,  that  tJie  socially  unfit  person  is  the  person  of  poor 
judgment.  He  may  have  learned  a  great  deal  in  some 
directions  ;  he  may  in  the  main  reproduce  the  activities 
required  by  his  social  tradition  ;  but  with  it  all  he  is,  in 
some  degree,  out  of  joint  with  the  general  system  of  esti- 
mated values  by  which  society  is  held  together.  This 
appears  to  be  true  even  of  the  pronounced  types  of  unsocial 
individuals.  The  criminal  is  a  man  of  poor  judgment.  It 
may  be  that  hie  has  a  bad  strain  of  natural  heredity,  what 
the  theologians  call  'original  sin  '  ;  he  is  then  an  'habitual 
criminal '  in  Ferri's  distinction  of  types.  Any  sense  of 
his  failure  to  accept  the  teachings  of  society  may  be  quite 
absent,  crime  being  so  normal  to  him.  But  the  fact 
remains  that  in  his  social  judgment  he  is  mistaken  ;  his 
normal  is  not  society's  normal.  He  has  failed  to  be  edu- 
cated in  the  judgments  of  his  fellows,  however  besides,  and 
however  more  deeply,  he  may  have  failed.  Or,  again,  the 
criminal  may  commit  crime  simply  because  he  is  carried 
away  in  an  eddy  of  good  companionship,  which  represents 
a  temporary  current  of  social  influence ;  or  yet  again,  his 
nervous  energies  may  be  overtaxed  temporarily  or  drained 
of  their  force,  so  that  his  education  in  social  judgment  is 
forgotten.  In  all  these  cases  he  is  the  '  occasional  crimi- 
nal ' ;  but  it  is  yet  true  of  him  also,  that  while  he  is  a 
criminal,  while  he  has  yielded  to  temptation,  has  gratified 
private  impulse,  he  has  then  lost  his  social  balance,  he  is 
no  longer  socially  sane.  In  it  all  he  shows  the  lack  of  that 


Conception  of  the  Social  Person  87 

sustaining  force  of  social  consciousness  which  represents 
the  level  of  righteous  judgment  in  his  time  and  place. 
Then  as  to  the  idiot,  the  imbecile,  the  insane  —  they,  too, 
have  no  good  judgment,  for  the  very  adequate  but  pitiful 
reason  that  they  have  no  judgment  at  all. 

§  6.    Conception  of  the  Social  Person 

51.  It  may  be  well  at  this  stage  of  our  inquiry  to  em- 
phasize the  main  conclusion  to  which  our  discussions  have 
led,  although  the  repetition  may  be  unnecessary  to  many 
readers.  Yet  for  the  clearer  understanding  of  the  general 
positions  involved  in  the  further  expositions  of  the  essay,  I 
venture  to  make  this  further  statement. 

All  our  thought  has  led  us  to  see  that  one  of  the  histori- 
cal conceptions  of  man  is,  in  its  social  aspects,  mistaken. 
Man  is  not  a  person  who  stands  up  in  his  isolated  majesty, 
meanness,  passion,  or  humility,  and  sees,  hits,  worships, 
fights,  or  overcomes,  another  man,  who  does  the  opposite 
things  to  him,  each  preserving  his  isolated  majesty,  mean- 
ness, passion,  humility,  all  the  while,  so  that  he  can  be 
considered  a  '  unit '  for  the  compounding  processes  of  social 
speculation.  On  the  contrary,  a  man  is  a  social  outcome 
rather  than  a  social  unit.  He  is  always,  in  his  greatest 
part,  also  some  one  else.  Social  acts  of  his  —  that  is,  acts 
which  may  not  prove  anti-social  —  are  his  because  they  are 
society  s  first ;  otherwise  he  would  not  have  learned  them 
nor  have  had  any  tendency  to  do  them.  Everything  that 
he  learns  is  copied,  reproduced,  assimilated,  from  his 
fellows;  and  what  all  of  them,  including  him, — all  the 
fellows,  the  socii,  —  do  and  think,  they  do  and  think  be- 
cause they  have  each  been  through  the  same  course  of 


88  TIte  Social  Person 

copying,  reproducing,  assimilating,  that  he  has.  When  he 
acts  quite  privately,  it  is  always  with  a  boomerang  in  his 
hand  ;  and  every  use  he  makes  of  his  weapon  leaves  its 
indelible  impression  both  upon  the  other  and  upon  him. 

It  is  on  such  truths  as  these  which  recent  writers 1  have 
been  bringing  to  light  that  the  philosophy  of  society  must 
be  gradually  built  up.  Only  the  neglect  of  such  facts  can 
account  for  the  present  state  of  social  discussion.  Once 
let  it  be  our  philosophical  conviction,  drawn  from  the  more 
general  results  of  psychology  and  anthropology,  that  man 
is  not  two,  an  ego  and  an  alter,  each  of  which  is  in  active 
and  chronic  protest  against  a  third  great  thing,  society ; 
once  dispel  this  hideous  un-fact,  and  with  it  the  remedies 
found  by  the  egoists,  back  all  the  way  from  the  Spencers 
to  the  Hobbeses  and  the  Comtes,  — and  I  submit  the  main 
barrier  to  the  successful  understanding  of  society  is  re- 
moved. 

52.  Perhaps  no  better  illustration  of  the  point  of  view 
which  I  wish  to  leave  prominently  in  the  reader's  mind 
can  be  reached  than  to  cite  its  contrast  with  that  of  the 
recent  book  by  Mr.  Kidd  on  Social  Evolution.  His  whole 
conception  hinges  on  the  view  that  the  individual  can  get 
no  'rational  sanction '  for  social  life.  He  must  then  either 
rebel  against  society  or  strangle  his  'reason.'  According 
to  Mr.  Kidd  he  does  the  latter  and,  by  espousing  a  super- 
natural sanction  found  in  some  religious  system,  acts  —  by 
inference  —  irrationally.  But  why  are  his  selfish  and  anti- 
social impulses  the  only  rational  part  of  the  man  ?  Does 
not  the  most  superficial  consideration  of  the  origin  of  man, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  teaching  of  the  first  principles  of 
psychology,  show  that  the  indulgence  of  these  impulses  is 

l  Stephen,  S.  Alexander,  Hoflding,  Tarde. 


Conception  of  the  Social  Person  89 

in  many  instances  irrational  ?  Action  on  his  real,  most 
complex,  richest  thought,  is  rational,  as  a  later  chapter  (on 
'  Sanctions,'  Chap.  IX.1)  aims  to  show  in  detail ;  and  if  the 
author  of  Social  Evolution  is  right  in  saying  that  religion 
serves  as  the  mainspring  of  this  kind  of  action,  then  re- 
ligion has  here,  in  some  degree,  its  rational  justification. 

1  See  also  Sect.  178. 


PART   II 
THE  INVENTIVE  PERSON 

CHAPTER   III 

INVENTION     VS.    IMITATION 

53.  THE  recent  literature  of  the  social  life  in  which  the 
imitative  functions  have  had  so  much  emphasis,  has  tended, 
in  the  minds  of  some,  to  obscure  the  great  facts  of  inven- 
tion ;  while  the  same  tendency  has  prevented  others  from 
giving  the  facts  of  imitation  due  weight.  In  the  pages 
above  I  have  tried  as  far  as  may  be  to  keep  to  the  natural 
history  standpoint,  tracing  what  seemed  to  be  clearly  imita- 
tive and  giving  a  genetic  view  of  the  rise  of  the  notion  of 
self  without  raising  the  question  one  way  or  the  other  as  to 
the  mind's  initiation  of  what  is  new  and  inventive.  This 
question  cannot  be  put  off  permanently,  however;  and  I  now 
propose  to  take  it  up  for  direct  discussion.  How  does  the 
mind  invent  anything  new  ?  Or,  put  conversely :  How  far  is 
what  we  call  invention  really  the  creation  of  something  new? 

This  question  may  be  approached,  I  think,  most  profit- 
ably from  the  side  of  the  child's  early  development.  And 
this  approach  to  it  has  the  advantage  of  giving  us  results 
in  direct  relation  to  those  already  reached  in  the  discussions 
of  the  imitative  factor  in  the  growth  of  the  personal  sense. 
If  the  child  is  inventive  at  all,  he  must  show  it  in  connec- 
tion with  the  attainments  which  he  makes  everywhere;  even 

90 


The  Process  of  Invention  91 

in  those  attainments  which  we  find  reason  for  calling  imita- 
tive. We  cannot  divide  the  child  into  two  parts,  two  realities 
coming  up  to  the  facts  of  life  with  different  capabilities,  one 
fitted  only  to  imitate,  and  the  other  fitted  to  invent.  Of 
course  it  is  the  same  child  whatever  he  does ;  and  if  he  be 
gifted  with  the  power  of  invention  at  all,  this  power  should 
show  itself  in  all  that  he  does  —  even  in  his  imitations. 

This  general  claim  may  be  enforced  by  the  examination 
of  the  child's  very  imitations.  Such  a  direct  appeal  to 
fact,  if  adequately  carried  out,  should  be  worth  any  amount 
of  abstract  discussion  of  the  merits  of  imitation  and  inven- 
tion in  the  mental  life  generally,  in  which  —  as  is  so  often 
the  case  —  the  two  types  of  function  are  considered  by 
definition  at  the  start  as  far  removed  from  each  other  as 
the  letters  'vs.'  put  between  them  would  suggest.  In  the 
opinion  of  many,  an  act  is  either  imitative  or  inventive, 
and  in  performing  it  the  child  is  either  a  creator  or  a 
slave.  The  phrases  '  divine  creation  '  and  '  slavish  imita- 
tion '  are  common  enough. 

§  i.    The  Process  of  Invention 

54.  Yet  before  we  go  to  the  child,  our  inquiry  may  be 
abbreviated  by  a  little  more  definition  of  the  term  '  inven- 
tion,' as  the  present  state  of  psychological  knowledge  ena- 
bles us  to  set  its  limitations  from  the  outset.  There  is  no 
question  in  psychological  circles  to-day  of  the  absolute  men- 
tal creation  which  was  formerly  assumed.  The  newer  doc- 
trine (i)  of  'mental  content,'  on  the  one  hand,  which  holds 
that  no  elements  of  representation  can  get  into  conscious- 
ness except  as  they  have  been  already  present  in  some  form 
in  presentation  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  (2)  the  doctrine 
that  the  activities  of  consciousness  are  always  conditioned 


92  Invention   vs.  Imitation 

on  the  content  of  presentation  and  representation  present 
at  the  time  —  these  positions  make  it  impossible  to  hold 
that  the  agent  or  the  mind  can  make  anything  for  itself 
4  out  of  whole  cloth,'  so  to  speak.  The  former  of  these 
views,  held  now  by  everybody,  leads  us  to  look  in  all  cases 
of  imagination  —  even  in  all  cases  of  invention — for  ele- 
ments of  construction  themselves  more  or  less  familiar 
beforehand  to  the  thought  of  the  person  who  makes  the 
invention.  The  phrase  '  imagination  is  constructive,  not 
creative'  has  crept  into  all  the  text-books,  even  into 
those  whose  authors  find  some  other  ground  for  holding 
that  absolute  initiations  may  be  possible  to  consciousness 
itself.  We  have  the  right,  therefore,  to  draw  our  lines 
somewhere  inside  this  view  of  current  psychology. 

The  other  doctrine  referred  to  is,  I  think,  equally  well 
established,  although  not  so  generally  known  in  popular 
statement  as  the  former.  Psychologists  look  upon  the 
activities  felt  in  consciousness  as  being  in  some  way 
involved  with  the  mechanism  of  movement — either  the 
movements  of  the  muscular  system  or  with  the  phases  of 
the  attention  —  and  then  find  these  movements  of  both 
kinds  expressions  of  the  content  then  in  consciousness. 
What  we  do  is  always  a  function  of  ^vhat  we  think  ^ 

If  these  principles  be  true,  there  is  a  certain  way  in 
which  consciousness  might  still  be  inventive.  We  might 
say  that  the  activities  of  consciousness  in  some  way  give 
a  new  shape,  form,  synthesis,  sifting,  to  the  very  contents 
out  of  which  they  themselves  arise. 

55.    Even  with  this  narrow  limitation,  there  are  again 

1  See  The  Power  of  Thought,  by  J.  D.  Sterrett,  for  a  detailed  popular  state- 
ment of  this.  Ciuyau,  Education  and  Heredity,  Chap.  I.,  also  draws  impres- 
sjve  lessons  from  it. 


The  Process  of  Invention  93 

two  directions  in  which  we  might  look  for  novelties  in  the 
mind.  These  two  ways  differ,  however,  in  the  '  locus,' 
so  to  speak,  of  the  effective  novelty  or  invention  in  the 
train  of  processes  involved  in  a  complete  section  of  con- 
sciousness. We  might  say  (i)  that  the  novel  or  original 
idea  came  into  consciousness  just  from  the  mingling 
together  in  memory,  imagination,  etc.,  of  the  disjecta 
membra  of  earlier  thoughts,  perceptions,  etc.,  in  new  and 
varied  combinations  :  that  on  one  hand.  Or  we  might  say 
(2)  that  the  novelty  was  introduced  among  the  forms  into 
which  the  actions,  the  endeavours,  the  efforts,  of  the  life 
of  conduct  tend  to  bring  the  earlier  memories,  imagina- 
tions, and  thoughts. 

i.  In  the  former  case,  we  should  find  all  the  various 
forms  in  which  our  fancies  unite  struggling  to  get  place  in 
our  apperceptive  systems  and  to  discharge  themselves  in 
action  ;  and  the  valuable  ones  would  get  their  value  from 
their  success  in  bringing  about  satisfactory  results.  The 
criteria  of  an  invention,  as  opposed  to  a  mere  accidental 
and  worthless  fancy,  would  be  its  subsequent  selection, 
and  there  would  be  no  way  of  discounting  beforehand  the 
chances  of  any  of  them.1  The  great  question  would  be 


1  This  would  seem  to  be  the  position  of  W.  James  in  his  admirable  Chap- 
ter XXVIII.  in  Vol.  II.  of  Principles  of  Psychology.  His  main  contention 
is  that  in  their  origin  the  forms  of  thinking  are  variations  '  independent  of 
experience.'  I  do  not  find  that  he  takes  up  in  detail  the  question  as  to  how 
these  variations  are  subsequently  selected,  although  he  admits  that  for  natural 
scientific  knowledge  they  must  be  (loc.  cit.,  II.,  p.  636).  If  it  be  by  experi- 
ence that  this  selecting  is  done  —  as  it  must  be  —  and  if  the  individual's 
selected  variations  are  reproduced  in  subsequent  generations  through  natural 
and  organic  selection  (see  Appendix  A)  as  well  as  by  social  transmission, 
then  we  have  mental  evolution  directed  by  experience  after  all  —  even  as 
regards  the  pure  and  'elementary'  categories  —  in  a  way  which  escapes  the 
criticisms  cogently  urged  by  James  against  the  '  race-experience '  hypothesis 


94  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

left  over :  How  do  the  real  inventions  get  selected  as 
permanent  and  valuable  acquisitions  ?  This  question  it  is 
which  would  force  us  to  review  the  whole  theory  of  the 
origin  of  thought  and  its  utility  in  organic  and  mental 
evolution.  This  cannot  be  done  here,1  but  we  may 
assume  the  general  result  that  it  is  by  action  that  their 
value  is  to  be  tested.  If  it  be  said  with  some  that  con- 
sistency with  earlier  thought  is  the  test,  then  we  may 
say  that  it  is  by  action  that  all  this  earlier  thought  has 
been  tested,  and  it  is  through  action  that  the  thoughts 
already  acquired  as  valuable  are  held  together  in  a  system. 
The  very  test  of  consistency  means  synergy,  or  unity  of 
action.  It  is,  then,  a  short  step  to  the  view  that  it  is 
preferably  from  the  basis  of  the  active  achievements 
already  secured  that  the  new  combinations  or  interpre- 
tations which  are  real  inventions  arise.  This  leads  us  to 
the  second  possible  view. 

2.  On  this  view  the  new  combinations  secured  for  the 
inventive  life  are  not  the  chance  outcome  of  the  revived 
fragments  of  memory  and  fancy ;  they  are  rather  the  new 
forms  into  which  the  materials  of  our  thought  are  cast 
as  the  result  of  variations  in  our  actions  in  the  process 
of  adaptation  to  the  ends  of  utility.  It  is  by  adapted 
action  that  our  mental  life  is  held  together  in  great  con- 
sistent thought-systems ;  and  it  is  by  new  refinements 
upon  these  adapted  and  correlated  actions  that  new  varia- 
tions are  introduced  into  the  systems  of  our  coherent 

of  Spencer :  and  this  even  on  James"  suppositions.  There  would  thus  he  a 
progressive  coincidence  between  what  is  a  priori  to  the  individual  (arising  as 
variation,  then  selected  and  inherited)  ami  what  is  true  to  experience  in  the 
evolution  of  the  race. 

1  I  have  already  considered  this  topic  in  detail  in  my  earlier  volume  on 
Mental  Development. 


The  Process  of  Invention  95 

thought.  The  criteria  of  the  value  of  these  new  elements 
of  thought  are  again  their  issue  in  action  ;  and  they  have 
to  be  actually  tested  :  but  that  they  issue  from  the  plat- 
form of  accomplished  systems  and  accomplished  accom- 
modations renders  their  good  quality  the  more  likely  from 
the  start. 

On  this  second  view,  which  I  give  as  the  true  one, 
the  process  of  selection  goes  on  from  a  level  of  earlier 
mental  attainment,1  while,  on  the  other  view,  each  inven- 
tion is  a  casual  outcome  from  among  all  the  possible 
creations  of  fancy.  The  question  of  the  actual  opera- 
tion of  the  selection,  both  in  its  objective  tests  and  in 
the  brain-processes  involved,  is  left  for  a  later  page.2 
Both  views,  however,  assume  the  existence  of  variations 
in  brain-processes ;  one  places  them  on  the  receptive 
or  sensory  side,  and  the  other  in  the  motor  or  active 
side.  One  says,  we  are  liable  to  all  sorts  of  imagina- 
tions ;  some  of  these  prove  valuable  and  true.  The  other 
says,  we  are  capable  of  thoughts  which  are  valuable  and 
true  because  they  are  held  in  a  system  by  the  processes 
of  action  and  attention  ;  when  these  processes  vary,  some 
of  the  variations  give  better  and  truer  thoughts. 

56.  It  is  true,  the  latter  would  also  say,  that  we  do 
imagine  all  sorts  of  things,  but  it  is  not  to  these  imagin- 
ings that  we  often  look  for  the  valuable  inventions.3 


1  This,  it  is  evident,  makes  the  determination  of  mental  evolution  in  the 
lines  of  experience  —  as  indicated  in  the  note  on  page  93 —  still  more  direct, 
seeing  that  the  variations  from  which  the  selections  are  made  are  themselves 
distributed  about  the  mean  of  earlier  adaptations. 

2  §  3  of  this  chapter,  on  '  Selective  Thinking.' 

8  Since  this  was  written,  the  article  of  W.  M.  Urban  {Psych.  Rev.,  July, 
1897)  nas  appeared,  with  an  interesting  discussion.  Dr.  Urban  agrees  with 
the  position  taken  here  to  the  extent  of  holding  that  new  thoughts  arise 


96  Invention   vs.  Imitation 

This  last  position  is  proved  from  the  comparison  of 
the  two  fields  of  fancy  and  thought  respectively.  We 
rarely  come  upon  a  valuable  combination  in  our  revery, 
or  in  our  dreaming,  or  in  our  rumination  in  subjects 
which  we  have  not  studiously  explored.  The  inventions 
come  from  hard  thinking,  steady  application,  casting  about 
of  attention,  trained  and  conscious  direction  of  the  opera- 
tions of  mind.  The  valuable  variations,  therefore,  are 
already  more  or  less  determined,  as  a  whole,  in  their 
direction,  by  reason  of  the  particular  system  in  which 
they  occur.  These  systems  have  arisen  under  the  rule  of 
certain  objective  marks  or  coefficients  of  belief  in  the 
different  spheres  of  truth.1 

57.  This  general  view,  I  may  also  add,  is  consistent 
with  the  psychological  requirements  already  laid  down. 
We  saw  that  a  new  invention  must  be  made  out  of  old 
material,  and  must  come  just  through  the  activity  which 
it  is  the  function  of  this  old  material  to  arouse.  The  view 
presented  fulfils  both  these  requirements.  It  makes  the 
new  thought  in  each  instance  one  of  the  possible  synthe- 
ses of  earlier  thoughts ;  and  then  it  has  just  the  advantage 
over  the  other  view  spoken  of,  that  it  makes  the  variation 
which  issues  in  the  invention,  a  variation  in  the  legiti- 
mate active  processes  arising  from  approximately  similar 
thoughts.  The  whole  process  is  a  circular  one.  Here,  let 
us  say,  are  thoughts  which  issue  in  movements  adapted  to 
these  thoughts.  Variations  in  these  movements  react  to 


from  the  platform  of  the  earlier  apperceptive  (his  '  imaginative ' )  processes, 
which  he  likewise  makes  imitative.  His  views  are  noticed  again  below, 
where  the  selecting  processes  are  discussed  (Sect.  78). 

1  For  the  discussion  of  these  criteria  of  belief  see  the  psychologies.     In  my 
Handbook,  II.,  Chap.  VII.,  they  arc  classified  under  the  term  '  coefficients.' 


The  Child '  s  Inventions  97 

produce  variations  in  the  thoughts.    Some  of  these  thought- 
variations  are  selected.1     These  are  the  inventions. 

So  with  the  formula  :  what  we  do  is  a  function  of  what 
we  think;  we  have  this  other:  what  we  shall  think  is 
a  function  of  what  we  have  done. 

§  2.    The  Child's  Inventions* 

58.  This  latter  view,  then,  —  if  it  be  true  and  if,  as  was 
said,  both  the  content  and  the  activity  are  conditioned  upon 

1  The  view  has  been  current  (Bain,  James)  that  thought  is  due  genetically 
to  the  obstruction,  or  damming  back  of  movement,  the  energies  which  would 
otherwise  have  discharged  in  movements  being  thus  used  in  building  up  the 
mechanism  of  thought.  I  have  never  seen  this  position  adequately  defended 
on  psychological  grounds.  It  seems  to  me  to  offer  insurmountable  difficul- 
ties. The  question  may  be  asked :  How  do  the  existing  correspondences 
arise  between  the  thoughts  about  the  external  world,  let  us  say,  and  the 
actual  conditions  existing  in  the  world  as  discovered  by  movement  ?  In 
other  words,  how  can  thoughts  be  true?  It  is  quite  natural  to  suppose  that 
the  existing  adapted  or  fact- revealing  movements  have  gone  before,  and  that 
•thought  is  in  some  way  a  form  of  inner  re-establishing,  without  constant  depend- 
ence on  real  objects,  of  the  system  of  values  first  revealed  by  such  movements. 
On  this  view  the  growth  of  thought  would  be  by  a  series  of  brain- variations 
which  produced  in  the  mind  a  '  copy-system '  of  the  actual  relations  of  the 
world  first  reported,  or  at  least  contributed  to,  by  movement.  The  move- 
ment-variations would  go  ahead  of  the  thought-variations,  and  the  growth  of 
thought  would  depend  upon  successful  movement,  rather  than  upon  its  obstruc- 
tion and  damming  up.  On  the  '  obstruction '  view,  on  the  contrary,  the  thought- 
variations  could  prove  their  value,  or  get  to  be  judged  true,  only  through  their 
issue  in  movement;  and  besides  the  difficulty  of  doing  this  under  the  con- 
ditions of  obstruction  (whatever  that  means),  there  would  have  to  be  the 
same  selecting  process  acting  upon  movements,  which  would  have  been  in- 
voked in  case  the  simple  movement-variations  went  ahead.  It  seems  to  me 
to  involve,  when  we  reflect  upon  it,  a  sort  of  cart-before-the-horse  all  through 
the  evolution  of  mind.  It  is  much  truer  to  the  facts  to  say  that  simple 
motor  adaptations  —  in  thinking  they  are  adaptations  of  attention  —  go  before 
thought,  and  that  the  brain-variations  which  perpetuate  and  stand  for  these 
adaptations  are  ipso  facto  selected  in  the  selection  of  the  movements;  with 
them  come  the  true  thoughts. 

3  Most  of  this  paragraph  has  appeared  in  The  Inland  Educator,  July, 
Aug.,  1897. 


98  I  live  n  I  ion  vs.  Imitation 

the  growth  of  experience,  —  ought  to  get  some  support  from 
the  careful  examination  of  the  growth  of  the  child's  experi- 
ence at  the  very  time  when  he  seems  to  be  most  clearly 
illustrating  both  of  the  limitations  imposed  by  psychology 
upon  his  originality.  In  childhood  he  is  most  clearly  sub- 
ject to  these  limitations,  because  then  he  is  mainly  a 
learner.  He  does  not  turn  out  many  startling  inventions 
then ;  at  least,  they  are  not  startling  to  others,  however 
they  may  seem  so  to  him.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  can 
usually  see  whence  he  has  derived  most  of  the  material 
of  his  thought,  and  by  what  kinds  of  reaction  upon  his  mate- 
rial he  has  come  to  get  it  into  the  forms  which  his  little 
inventions  present. 

The  task,  therefore,  to  which  we  bring  ourselves  is  a 
very  plain  and  simple  one:  to  detect  in  the  inventions,— 
the  games,  sand-piles,  toy-houses,  statements,  beliefs,  etc., 
—  of  the  child,  any  contributions  he  has  himself  made  to 
the  examples,  situations,  events,  shapes  of  tool  or  thing, 
or  what  not,  which  stand  ready  at  his  hand  and  which  he 
comes  to  perceive,  think  about,  or  act  upon.  In  short, 
what  does  he  as  an  individual  contribute  to  the  complexion 
of  his  own  thought  ? 

59.  There  are  two  general  principles  apparently  involved 
in  all  a  child's  originalities  ;  these  two  principles  have  grown 
up  in  my  own  mind  as  necessary  interpretations  of  the 
observations  which  I  have  made  of  children  in  the  last  few 
years,  and  in  the  course  of  the  meditating  which  I  have 
done  on  the  varied  doings  of  childhood.  I  shall  venture 
to  state  one  of  these  principles  at  a  time,  in  the  form  of  a 
somewhat  dogmatic-sounding  opinion,  and  then  go  on  to 
cite  the  evidence  and  give  the  illustrations  upon  which  it 
is  based,  as  far  as  space  may  permit. 


The  Child's  Inventions  99 

1.  77/i?  child's  originalities  are  in  great  part  the  new 
ways  in  wJiicJi  he  finds  his  knowledges  falling  together  in 
consequence  of  his  attempts  to  act  to  advantage  on  what  he 
already  knows.     Or,  made  more  brief,  his  originalities  arise 
through  his  action,  struggle,  trial  of  things  for  himself  in 
an  imitative  way. 

2.  The  child's  originalities,  further,  are  in  great  measure 
the  combinations  of  his  knowledges  which  he  feels  justified 
in  expecting  to  hold  for  others  to  act  on  also. 

60.  These  two  statements  I  do  not  mean  to  make  as 
two  distinct  principles  operative  apart  or  in  opposition  to 
each  other,  nor  are  they  the  expression  of  a  chronological 
order  in  the  child's  development ;  they  rather  present 
phases  of  the  one  fact  of  invention,  and  for  convenience 
for  reference  we  may  call  them  respectively  the  '  personal 
phase'  and  the  'social  phase.' 

There  is  a  further  statement,  also,  which  I  may  make  of 
both  of  them  before  going  on  to  consider  them  separately ; 
a  statement  which  it  is  well  to  make  in  advance  of  its 
clearer  formulation  from  the  evidence,  since  it  brings  the 
topic  well  into  connection  with  our  earlier  distinctions  in 
the  child's  development.  This  statement  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  child's  inventions  are,  in  these  two  phases,  reflec- 
tions of  the  twofold  aspects  of.  his  own  personal  growth. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  we  found  the  child  growing 
by  the  imitative  absorption  of  material  from  the  persons 
about  him,  in  the  first  instance ;  and  then,  in  the  second 
instance,  by  legislating  his  own  personal  growth  —  the 
facts  which  he  has  found  out  about  himself  as  a  personal 
being  —  back  into  the  persons  around  him  again.  Now 
the  first  phase  of  his  inventive  activity  is  shown  in  connec- 
tion with  the  first  of  these  personal  movements :  he  is 


ioo  Invent  ion  vs.   Imitation 

original  in  tlic  way  lie  learns  from  otliers  by  taking  in 
personal  elements  from  them.  And  the  second  phase  of 
his  originality  is  a  function  of  the  other  process  of  his 
personal  growth,  he  is  original  in  the  way  he  treats  others, 
the  way  he  disports  himself  in  his  intercourse  with  them. 
And  the  latter  is  a  sort  of  test  or  proof  of  the  value  of  the 
former  to  the  child  himself. 

61.  I.  We  may  now  take  up  for  fuller  treatment  the 
'  personal '  phase  of  the  child's  inventions. 

In  order  to  avoid  repetition,  use  may  be  made  of  the 
results  of  the  earlier  pages  devoted  to  the  development  of 
the  child's  sense  of  his  ego  or  personal  self ;  and  we  may 
draw  from  the  details  the  great  fact  that  all  his  personal 
absorption  from  his  immediate  associates  is  through  his 
tendency  to  imitate.  The  interesting  character  which 
draws  him  to  this  element  or  that  in  the  man,  woman,  or 
child  from  whom  he  learns,  is  itself  due  to  imitation  ;  for 
his  interests  are  really  only  the  intellectual  reflection  of 
his  habits,  and  his  habits  are  the  motor  phenomena  which 
have  resulted  from  his  earlier  activities  of  the  same  imita- 
tive type.  But  quite  apart  from  theory,  we  are  constrained 
by  the  facts  to  say  that  the  method  of  his  personal  progress 
is  imitation.  For  if  we  say  that  he  cannot  do  anything 
without  some  approximate  ability  to  apprehend  what  he  is 
to  do — that  is,  without  a  content  of  revival  of  something 
already  apprehended  on  an  earlier  occasion  ;  and  if  we  go 
on  to  enforce  the  other  psychological  truth  put  in  evidence 
just  above  —  that  no  action  can  take  place  which  is  not,  in 
greater  or  less  degree,  the  proper  outcome  of  the  motor 
energies  of  the  revived  content :  admitting  these  two 
points,  then  the  action  which  the  child  performs  in  any 
case  must  have  an  imitative  character  just  in  so  far  as 


The  Child's  Inventions  101 

the  habit  which  it  tends  to  stimulate  is  true  to  the  situa- 
tion outside  him  which  the  child  observes  ;  that  is,  in  so 
far  as  he  succeeds  in  learning. 

For  example,  say  a  child  sees  me  finger  a  ring.  He  has 
certain  habits  of  action.  The  content  of  his  conscious- 
ness —  my  fingers  —  tends  to  start  the  one  of  his  habits  of 
action  which  is  attached  to  other  contents  most  nearly  like 
this  one,  i.e.,  his  own  fingers.  But  this  movement  of  his 
fingers  thus  brought  about  is  imitative ;  and  the  fact  that 
it  is  imitative,  that  is,  that  it  is  the  motor  expression  of  a 
presentation  like  the  one  set  before  him  —  his  finger  sub- 
stituted for  mine  —  this  is  the  reason,  and  the  only  reason, 
that  a  movement  takes  place  by  which  he  learns.  In  other 
words,  he  can  only  learn  by  imitating ;  for  if  he  only  acts 
strictly  on  the  revived  elements  of  content  which  come  up 
in  his  own  consciousness  from  within,  then  he  is  acting 
strictly  as  he  has  acted  before,  and  that  teaches  him  noth- 
ing. On  the  other  hand,  he  cannot  act  in  ways  absolutely 
new,  for  they  come  into  his  consciousness  with  no  tendency 
to  stir  up  any  appropriate  kinds  of  action.  He  cannot  act 
suitably  upon  them  at  all.  Hence  it  is  only  new  presenta- 
tions which  are  assimilable  to  old  ones  that  can  get  the 
benefit  of  the  habits  already  attached  to  the  old  ones,  and 
so  lead  to  actions  more  or  less  suited  to  the  new.  But  this 
is  imitation. 

We  have  just  been  giving,  as  may  have  been  evident, 
the  basis  of  what  is  usually  called  the  '  instinct  of  imitation.' 
The  instinct  to  imitate  operates  by  the  use  of  the  move- 
ments required  to  do  the  thing  imitated.  But  unless  the 
child  has  a  sense  of  what  movements  will  do  it,  he  cannot 
produce  them.  This  sense  of  the  proper  movements  can 
only  have  come  from  the  earlier  performance  of  those 


IO2  Invent  ion  vs.  Imitation 

movements  in  connection  with  some  other  mental  content. 
And  the  movements  associated  with  another  mental  con- 
tent can  be  available  for  this  content  only  if  this  new 
content  can  take  the  place  of  the  old  one  in  the  motor 
scheme.1 

62.  Now  the  reader  asks  at  once  :  Does  the  child  learn 
anything  by  such  imitations  ?     Is  he  not  simply  acting  out 
his  habits  just  the  same  whether  it  be  the  thought  of  his 
own  fingers   directly,    or   only  the   thought   of   them    in- 
directly as   suggested  by  the   sight   of   some   one   else's 
fingers,  which  brings  out  the  movement  ? 

To  this  last  question  we  may  answer,  yes,  at  once.  The 
child  may  not  learn  anything  important  simply  by  the 
movement,  since  it  is  very  largely  a  movement  which  he 
has  made  before.  But  let  us  put  the  question  more 
broadly  and  ask  whether  he  learns  anything  by  the  situa- 
tion as  a  whole  ;  that  requires  a  very  different  answer. 
The  question  put  by  the  reader  may  then  be  stated  in 
general  terms  :  How  can  the  imitative  situation  operate  to 
instruct  the  child  ? 

63.  We  must  at  once  see  that  his  own  movements,  his 
imitative  actions,  bring  new  elements  into  the  situation. 
He  has,  just  after  he  acts,  three  things  in  his  mind  —  let 
us  say  in  the  case  of  the  imitation  of  the  movements  of 
the  fingers.     First,  he  sees  the  movements  of  the  other 
person  ;  then  he  has  the  memory  of  his  own  finger-move- 
ments (probably  indeed  both  of  his  fingers  as  they  look 
and  of  the  movements  of  them  as  felt) ;  then  finally,  the 
sight  of  his  own  finger-movements.     Now  two   different 
things  may  happen,  and  which  of  the  two  it  is  to  be  will 

1  The  mechanism  of  imitation  is  described  in  detail  in  my  Mental  Develop- 
ment, Chap.  X.,  §  I,  and  Chap.  XIII.,  §  2. 


The  Child's  Inventions  103 

depend  largely  on  the  age  of  the  child.  He  may  learn 
something,  and  he  may  not.  If  he  have  already  attained 
what  is  called  'persistent  imitation' — the  try-try-again 
tendency  —  or  the  more  developed  exercise  of  volition 
which  comes  through  the  exercise  of  persistent  imitation, 
then  he  will  learn.  Indeed,  then  he  cannot  help  learning. 

For  he  will  see  the  inadequacy  of  his  attempt  in  the 
first  instance  and  then  rally  his  forces  to  do  better.  This 
means  that  he  will  act  again  ;  but  not  as  before  simply 
upon  the  old  sense  of  his  own  earlier  finger-movements, 
but  upon  the  whole  threefold  complex  content  which  is 
now  surging  in  his  consciousness  for  expression.  And 
added  to  it  all,  will  be  certain  extraneous  elements  result- 
ing from  his  action :  strains  due  to  his  attention,  twitch- 
ings  from  his  other  limbs,  rushings  of  blood  to  the  head, 
pleasant  emotional  excitement,  fatigue  presently  in  the 
muscles  used,  etc.  Now  let  us  say  he  acts  a  second  time. 
Here  is  again  a  new  complexity  of  content,  more  varied, 
and  as  strange  as  the  former  one.  Let  him  go  on  trying 
till  he  'hits  it'  —  succeeds  in  making  my  finger-movements 
after  me  —  and  then  ask  whether  this  movement  is  all 
that  the  child  has  learned  ! 

64.  Apart  from  the  acquisition  of  the  finger-combination 
which  is  his  immediate  object,  he  has  learned  a  variety  of 
things.  Only  the  principal  features  of  his  learning  may 
be  mentioned  here  :  the  essentials  of  the  fact  of  learning 
itself  apart  from  the  details  of  this  particular  finger-exer- 
cise. He  learns  we  may  say,  first,  a  great  number  of 
combinations  which  are  not  those  he  is  after.  Each  of  the 
single  efforts  which  he  makes  is  a  novelty  to  him,  and  each 
has  its  interesting  features.  Indeed,  if  we  watch  him,  and 
especially  if  we  withdraw  the  'copy'  which  our  finger- 


IO4  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

combination  sets  before  him,  we  may  find  his  becoming  so 
absorbed  in  the  single  efforts  which  he  makes,  the  partial 
successes  which  crown  his  efforts,  that  he  forgets  to  go  on 
trying.  He  begins  to  reproduce  his  own  combinations 
again  and  again,  and  so  to  learn  them.  So  in  each  of  his 
efforts,  no  matter  how  far  remoyed  it  may  be  from  the 
copy  he  sets  out  to  imitate,  in  each  of  them  he  finds  a 
possible  combination  of  fruitful  pursuit  for  his  training  and 
in  many  cases  also  fruitful  for  his  utilities  of  movement. 

Then,  again,  another  very  valuable  lesson ;  he  learns 
the  method  of  all  learning.  He  begins  to  see  that  it  is  he 
who  varies  the  copy  by  trying  to  reproduce  it ;  that  he 
turns  out  interesting  combinations  which  are  his  own 
peculiar  property.  He  stops  in  wonder  before  his  own 
doings,  and  runs  again  to  his  elders  or  to  his  companions 
saying,  '  See  what  I  can  do.'  He  thus  grows  to  recognize 
himself  as  more  than  a  mere  imitator.  He  begins  to  see 
that  it  is  just  by  this  method  of  exercising  themselves  that 
the  other  persons  from  whom  he  is  accustomed  to  learn 
get  their  facility  in  giving  him  new  things  to  learn  ;  and 
so  he  gradually  apprehends  that  after  all  he  is  not  entirely 
dependent  upon  them  for  the  setting  of  new  lessons  to 
himself.  He  begins  to  be  in  a  measure  self-regulative  in 
the  tasks  of  his  daily  life. 

These  are  the  two  great  aspects  of  his  learning  —  both 
much  more  important  than  the  mere  acquisition  of  the 
single  action  which  he  sets  out  to  do.  In  regard  to  that 
latter  he  is  imitative,  he  is  constrained  by  the  copy,  he  is 
in  a  sense  a  slave,  so  far  as  it  is  legitimate  to  look  at  him 
as  in  any  wise  merely  learning  that  one  thing.  The  weak- 
minded  are,  in  this  sense,  merely  imitators ;  they  learn 
only  one  thing  at  a  time,  and  learn  it  by  the  direct  com- 


The  Child's  Inventions  105 

pelling  force  of  the  copy  set  up  before  them  and  driven 
into  them.  For  them  alone  is  it  a  sign  of  slavery  to  imitate. 
And  to  them  it  is  so,  merely  because  they  have  no  capacity 
to  be  anything  but  slaves.  Remove  the  bonds  of  their  limi- 
tation—  the  bonds  to  imitation  —  and  far  from  becoming 
free,  they  would  perish.  But  the  normal  child  — the  child 
of  restless  attention,  absorbing  interests,  the  dawning 
sense  of  an  agency  of  his  own  which  is  destined  to  set  law 
in  its  turn  to  the  world  as  well  as  to  himself  —  he  is  never 
a  slave  even  in  his  most  strenuous  imitations.  And  the 
further  examination  of  his  learning  will  show  us  as  much. 

65.  First,  we  may  say  that  each  of  the  situations  which 
arises  from  his  effort  to  reproduce  the  copy  is  an  invention 
of  the  child's.     It  is  so  because  he  works  it  out;  no  one 
else  in  the  world  knows  it  nor  can  reproduce  it.     He  aims, 
it  is  true,  not  at  doing  anything   new ;   he   aims   at    the 
thing  the  copy  sets  for  him  to  imitate.     But  what  he  does 
differs  both  from  this  and  from  anything  he  has  ever  done 
before.     It  is  a  new  synthesis  of  old  material,  of  his  old 
pictures  of  finger-movements,  in  this  case,  with  the  new 
picture  presented  to  his  eye,  and  his  old  strains  of  muscle, 
shortness  of  breath,  rushing  of  blood,  setting  of    glottis, 
bending  of  joints,  etc.     But  the  outcome  —  that  is  new, 
both  in  the  new  picture  of  finger-movements  and  in   the 
setting  together  of  the  strains,  organic  sensations,  and  all. 
He  has  a  new  thing  to  contemplate  and  he  is  withal  a  new 
person  to  contemplate  it.     The  plane  of   his   being   and 
contemplation  is  now  a  grade  higher. 

66.  We  have  already  seen  how  it  is  that  his  sense  of 
himself  grows  by  these  accretions  from  the  elements  of 
personality  taken  in  by  imitation.     It   is  thus    that  the 
projective  in  the  personal  life  of  father,  mother,  etc.,  are 


106  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

incorporated  in  his  thought  of  his  own  subjective  self. 
This  new  self,  at  each  new  plane,  is  also  a  real  invention. 
The  child  not  only  becomes  a  self,  not  only  acquires  the 
sense  of  higher  power,  mastery,  goodness,  or  whatever 
aspect  of  his  personal  growth  the  particular  instance  may 
illustrate ;  he  does  more.  He  makes  it ;  he  gets  it  for 
himself  by  his  own  action  ;  he  achieves,  invents  it.  And 
the  same  is  true  of  all  his  knowledges.  He  never  simply 
takes  the  knowledge  of  some  one  else.  This  it  would  be 
impossible  for  him  to  do.  Even  the  weak-minded  of 
whom  I  have  spoken  must  have  enough  self-control  to 
imitate,  and  enough  assimilative  capacity  to  hold  together, 
in  a  new  form,  the  elements  which  surge  into  his  con- 
sciousness through  and  with  his  imitative  act.  But  the 
active  healthy  child  brings  a  new  self  up  to  a  new  object 
every  time  he  acts  in  a  way  not  entirely  dictated  by  habit ; 
and  the  result  ensuing,  the  second  construction  which  then 
again  follows  his  new  act,  is  another  invention  for  him  to 
take  delight  in.  The  growth  of  self  is  seen  in  the  growth 
of  his  demand  that  his  results  shall  show  constantly  more 
independence  of  the  external  copy.  The  growing  com- 
plexity and  utility  of  the  invention  which  he  turns  out  is 
a  new  premium  put  in  his  thought  upon  the  need  of  con- 
sidering himself  more  than  an  imitator.  So  he  comes  to 
view  himself  as  a  free  man  who,  in  an  ever-increasing 
degree,  bends  nature  and  his  fellow-man  to  his  will,  and 
to  view  what  he  does  as  a  contribution  to  the  arrange- 
ments and  utilities  of  things. 

67.  To  illustrate  how  this  works  practically,  we  may 
take  this  instance  from  my  child's  use  of  her  building 
blocks.  She  sits  on  the  floor  and  I  ask  her  to  make  a 
church  like  the  one  she  sees  pictured  in  her  book. 


The  Child's  Inventions  107 

She  begins,  lays  the  foundation  of  the  church  :  a  long 
line  of  blocks  laid  straight,  with  another  line  crossing  the 
first  about  two-thirds  of  its  length.  Then  suddenly  her 
face  lights  up  and  she  quickly  takes  more  blocks  and 
lays  a  third  line  parallel  with  the  second  and  crossing  the 
long  line  at  one-third  of  its  length.  "  What  are  you 
doing  that  for,  I  ask ;  I  never  taught  you  to  make  a 
church  with  two  cross  lines."  "  Oh,  no  ;  I  am  making  an 
animal,"  says  she,  "with  a  head  and  a  tail  and  four  legs." 
She  has,  to  my  knowledge,  never  made  an  animal  like 
this  before.  And  she  certainly  did  not  set  out  to  make 
an  animal.  It  had  come  to  her  in  her  progress  with  the 
church  that  the  arrangement  might  be  altered  so  as  to 
make  an  animal.  That  is,  her  mental  picture  had  come, 
in  her  action  upon  it,  Especially  in  laying  the  cross-line 
of  blocks,  to  be  assimilated  with  her  old  mental  picture  of 
an  animal  ;  and  forthwith,  by  the  addition  of  another  line 
like  the  former,  the  church  turned  into  an  animal. 

Now  this  is  an  invention  in  the  strictest  sense.  It  is 
peculiar  to  the  child.  Who  ever  before  made  an  animal 
out  of  a  church  ?  What  external  influence  suggested  to 
the  child  the  similarity  between  the  essential  lines  of  the 
two  objects  ?  What  former  single  mental  picture  of  her 
own  adequately  explains  this  sudden  outcome  ?  If  none 
of  these,  then  all  the  sources  are  exhausted,  and  we  must 
say  that  she  is  an  inventor  as  much  as  any  historical 
genius  is  who  has  enriched  the  world  by  his  thought. 

68.  But  now  the  child  does  something  further ;  she 
calls  on  everybody  in  the  room  to  come  and  see  the 
animal  which  she  has  made ;  she,  no  less  than  the  first 
Maker  of  whom  we  are  told,  looks  upon  the  thing  that 
she  hath  made  and,  lo  !  it  is  very  good.  And  then  she 


io8  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

amuses  herself  by  making  the  animal  again  and  again, 
and  saying  also  "it  is  not  a  church,  for  a  church  doesn't 
have  these  two  ends "  (the  third  line  across).  "  I  have 
made  it  into  an  animal!"  So  —  and  this  is  her  second 
invention — she  has  changed  her  thought  of  herself.  To 
herself  she  is  now  a  person  who  can  make  animals  out 
of  churches.  She  is  in  a  new  sense  —  or  at  least  from  a 
new  point  of  view  —  an  agent;  her  growing  sense  of  her 
own  originality,  power  over  things,  freedom  to  depart 
from  the  thraldom  of  imitation,  has  received  an  impulse. 
The  next  time  she  comes  to  play  with  the  blocks,  the 
splendid  invention  of  this  occasion  is  full  in  her  mind, 
and  the  blocks,  together  with  the  suggestions  which  I 
make  for  their  use,  are  to  her  things  for  her  domineering 
ego  to  trifle  with,  despise,  and  'utilize  as  never  before. 
She  has,  therefore,  come  to  a  new  thought  of  herself,  and 
this  is  also  a  discovery,  an  invention. 

69.  So  numerous  instances  might  be  cited  from  the 
lives  of  my  children,  many  more  complex  than  this  one, 
but  all  the  same  in  the  essential  elements  of  the  situation. 
And  the  great  fact  to  be  remarked  is  that  which  we 
formulated  in  the  beginning :  that  the  result  is  the  out- 
come of  the  child 's  action,  of  his  personal  struggle,  in  the 
first  instance ;  and  then,  second,  that  the  nature  of  his 
struggle  is  seen  to  be  that  of  strenuous  exercise  of  the 
habitual  imitative  activities  which  lie  has  already  acquired. 
The  child's  originalities  are  not  bolts  from  the  blue, 
nor  earthquakes  from  below ;  they  are  simply  his  own 
interpretations,  through  his  own  action,  of  the  situation 
which  spreads  its  elements  about  him  in  the  matter-of- 
fact  doings  of  the  life  of  habit.  By  exercising  his  habits 
in  the  new  and  original  ways  which  strenuous  imitation 


The  Child's  Inventions  109 

allows,  he  finds  out  more  both  about  himself  and  about  the 
world.  Then  we  observers  find  ourselves  inquiring,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  our  ignorance  of  the  processes  going 
on  in  his  consciousness,  how  such  a  beautiful,  true,  useful 
thing  could  have  come  to  be  his  discovery. 

So  much  may  be  said  of  the  facts  of  the  child's  originali- 
ties from  the  point  of  view  of  their  origin  ;  it  remains  to 
consider  the  second  aspect  of  the  case  already  pointed  out 
above  under  the  phrase  '  social  phase '  of  invention.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  the  aspect  now  put  in  evidence 
in  some  detail  was  described  as  the  '  personal  phase '  of 
invention. 

70.  II.  Coming  to  take  up  the  so-called  '  social '  aspect 
of  this  question,  we  may  again  state  the  general  principle 
which  the  following  pages  are  to  illustrate  :  the  principle 
that  the  child  now,  after  having  made  his  discovery,  does 
not  treat  it  as  an  individual  possession,  but  considers  it 
common  property,  for  others  as  for  himself,  and  then, 
withal,  considers  others  subject  to  the  same  need  of  find- 
ing it  true  that  he  is. 

The  first  phase  of  originality  we  have  found  to  have  its 
mental  motive  in  the  child's  absorption  of  new  elements 
of  the  personal  and  generally  projective  environment ;  he 
imitates,  as  has  been  made  clear,  and  proves  himself  an 
inventor  in  the  very  midst  of  his  imitations.  The  process 
is  that  of  the  first  movement  described  in  the  theory  of 
what  was  called  in  the  earlier  chapter  a  'dialectic  of 
personal  growth.'  The  projective  becomes  subjective,  and 
by  so  doing  it  becomes  in  each  event  an  invention.  But 
it  will  be  remembered  that  the  child  understands  others 
better  by  coming  to  better  knowledge  of  himself.  He 
reads  out  of  himself  the  facts  learned  of  himself ;  and  so 


no  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

lodges  the  richer  thought  of  self  also  in  the  persons  of 
others.  This  has  been  enlarged  upon  sufficiently  in  the 
earlier  connection. 

Now  this  second  aspect  of  his  treatment  of  the  material 
of  his  personal  thought  adds  an  interesting  phase  also  to 
the  meaning  of  his  originalities.  Whatever  his  construc- 
tions are,  he  reads  them  into  the  appropriate  escort,  con- 
nection, setting,  in  the  world  of  persons  and  things  around 
him.  And  the  degree  of  success  in  this  process,  the  degree 
of  what  we  call  truth  which  he  finds  his  new  syntheses 
attaining  under  this  exaction,  this  is  the  measure  of  his 
learning. 

71.  As  to  the  method  which  the  child  pursues  here, 
perhaps  an  example  of  what  we  call  '  inventive  lies '  may 
serve  us  best.  H.  was  guilty  of  the  first  lie  of  this  kind, 
which  I  discovered,  in  her  twenty-first  month.  On  May 
27,  1891,  I  was  busying  myself  with  some  students'  ex- 
amination papers  which  were  tied  up  in  bundles  of  a  size 
to  weigh  about  one  to  two  pounds  each.  A  number  of 
these  bundles  had  been  piled  up  in  the  passage-way  out  of 
sight  from  where  I  sat ;  and  as  H.  came  in  at  the  door  I 
told  her  that  she  might  help  me  by  bringing  them  into  the 
room.  To  this  she  gladly  assented  and  began  bringing 
them  in  one  by  one  to  the  floor  before  my  chair.  Pres- 
ently she  tired  of  the  task,  and  I  could  see  that  she  wished 
to  leave  off ;  her  step  grew  slow  and  her  countenance 
grave.  Then,  after  bringing  one  of  the  bundles,  she  stopped 
before  me,  hesitated  a  moment,  and  then  said  'no  moi'  ('no 
more,'  meaning,  'there  are  no  more').  Knowing  the  real 
number  of  the  packages,  I  suspected  a  certain  kind  of 
obliquity  and  so  looked  somewhat  severe  as  I  asked  'are 
there  really  no  more  ? '  She  was  evidently  discomforted 


The  Child 's  Inventions  1 1 1 

by  the  question  and  perhaps  also  by  the  manner  of  it ; 
and  after  hesitating  a  moment  or  two  looked  out  in  the 
direction  of  the  remaining  packages  and  said  '  moi '  ('  there 
are  more '),  and  ran  out  to  bring  in  another  to  show  me. 
This  is  an  instance  of  what  I  have  called  an  inventive  lie; 
and  it  will  throw  light  on  the  point  which  I  wish  to 
make. 

72.  When  we  come  to  ask  how  it  was  that  H.  resorted 
to  this  device  to  avoid  further  work,  we  see  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  make  certain  presuppositions  of  what  was  going 
on  in  her  consciousness.  In  the  first  place,  there  was  in 
her  mind  a  thought  which  went  farther  than  the  facts  ; 
she  had  to  picture  a  situation  in  which  the  essential  ele- 
ment was  the  absence  of  more  of  the  packages  in  the 
original  pile.  This  is  at  the  outset  an  invention  of  the 
'  personal '  sort  already  described  and  explained  in  the  fore- 
going passages.  It  has  been  through  her  action  in  bring- 
ing some  of  the  bundles  in  from  the  passage  that  she  has 
got  what  reason  she  has  for  the  imagination  that  there 
are  no  more ;  that  is,  that  she  has  brought  them  all. 
This  we  may  suppose  becomes  a  very  familiar  thought  to 
her  as  she  begins  to  grow  fatigued  ;  the  thought  of  the 
situation  when  all  should  be  done  and  she  should  be  re- 
lieved. But  now,  in  addition  to  this  thought,  there  is 
of  course  the  continued  thought  of  the  presence  of  the 
father,  myself,  as  the  director,  the  inciter,  the  one  whose 
commendation  is  to  be  gained  ;  and  with  this  there  is  the 
further  invention,  arising  also  through  her  activities  in 
social  situations  preceding  this,  the  thought  of  the  situa- 
tion when,  the  bundles  all  gone,  her  new  self  receives 
commendation  from  the  parent  whose  work  has  been 
done  for  him.  So  far,  clearly,  we  are  proceeding  on  the 


1 1 2  Invention  vs.   Imitation 

rules  of  construction  by  action  given  in  the  first  principle 
stated  above. 

What  is  necessary,  besides,  to  explain  the  child's  lie  ? 
This,  I  think  :  the  thought  that  her  construction  of  the 
situation  is  also  my  construction  of  the  situation,  or  would 
be  if  my  thought  went  forth  to  the  end  of  the  task  as  hers 
does.  All  that  is  needed  to  effect  this  in  my  mind  is  the 
information  that  the  bundles  are  all  gone.  That  would 
make  the  invention  true  —  just  as  true  as  if  she  went  on 
with  the  work  and  finished  it.  The  essence  of  the  lie  is 
just  the  adoption  of  this  social  device  to  produce  convic- 
tion as  a  substitute  for  the  ordinary  actual  facts.  And  this 
mental  movement,  on  the  part  of  the  child,  apart  from  its 
use  in  deceiving  others  as  in  this  case,  —  which  is  taken 
only  as  a  case  of  the  broader  phenomenon,  not  as  the  only 
or  the  most  frequent  case  of  children's  lies, —  is  an  clement 
in  all  originality  viewed  as  truth.  As  I  have  said  above, 
it  is  the  need  which  the  child  feels  that  others  as  well  as 
himself  think  his  original  thoughts  and  act  upon  them  as 
he  does.  In  this  case  the  child  adopts  a  conscious  social 
method  —  and  adults  do  in  their  lies  —  to  get  this  sec- 
ond element  artificially  attached  to  mental  constructions 
which  really  lack  it.  Without  it  both  her  invention  of  the 
new  situation  and  her  thought  of  her  new  self,  as  having 
wrought  the  situation,  are  not  true. 

73.  Let  me  explain  a  little  further  what  I  conceive  this 
second  factor  in  invention  to  be.  We  may  get  at  it  pos- 
sibly better  by  looking  at  the  child's  mental  constructions 
negatively.  Let  us  ask  what  distinguishes  his  inven- 
tions, his  originalities,  the  things  of  some  dignity  and 
worth  and  truth,  from  mere  imaginations  or  fancies  as 
such  ?  Certainly  he  has  vain  imaginations,  no  less  than 


The  Child's  Inventions  113 

we  adults ;  and  the  real  originalities,  the  truthful  ones, 
must  have  some  distinguishing  mark. 

This  question  presents  itself  in  a  very  broad  way  to 
general  psychology ;  and  I  may  at  once  assume  the  result 
that  in  the  criterion  established  by  our  first  principle  — 
i.e.,  that  it  is  by  action  and  thought  upon  real  things, 
copies,  events,  that  the  true  inventions  arise  —  we  have 
confirmed  the  conclusion  reached  theoretically  above,  which 
rules  out  the  vagaries  of  mere  fancy,  or  so-called  '  passive ' 
imagination.  The  outcome  of  fancy,  or  in  general  of 
imagination  uncontrolled  by  present  reality  or  by  the  atti- 
tude of  strenuous  thinking  and  action  upon  a  real  situa- 
tion, is  generally  worthless.  So  when  I  ask  how  the 
ordinary  creations  of  the  mind,  in  its  normal  pursuit  of 
truth,  and  in  the  midst  of  its  full  struggles  for  consistent 
and  enlightened  conduct,  fall  short  of  being  true  inven- 
tions, it  is  a  closer  question,  the  very  necessity  for  which 
is  often  overlooked.  It  is  this,  in  the  terms  of  my  child's 
lie ;  what  is  the  value,  to  the  child's  construction,  of  the 
further  acceptance  of  it  by  me  which  she  tells  the  '  lie ' 
to  secure  ?  Is  it  a  true  invention  before  this,  or  does  the 
child's  sense  that  I  must  accept  it  illustrate  a  real  and 
necessary  requirement  ? 

I  think  it  does  represent  a  real  requirement,  and  this 
because  this  factor,  when  it  is  secured,  brings  into  the  very 
construction  itself  new  elements,  the  assimilation  of  whicJi 
revises  and  purifies  the  construction  itself.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  we  found  the  child-  constantly  reading 
his  subjective  experiences  into  others,  trying  to  make  all 
his  thought  of  himself  'ejective.'  He  constantly  practises 
upon  his  little  brother,  seeing  how  he  will  act,  planning 
situations  based  on  what  he  thinks  the  little  fellow  will  do 


T  14  Invention   vs.   Imitation 

in  this  circumstance  or  that ;  in  it  all  putting  to  the  test 
of  experiment  the  features  of  himself  that  he  now  enter- 
tains in  his  thought ;  seeing,  by  the  unconscious  tests  of 
action,  whether  he  be  not  like  others.  This  we  have  seen 
to  be  an  insatiable  demand  of  the  child,  and  no  less  an 
essential  movement  in  his  personal  growth.  By  this  series 
of  tests  he  learns  what  is  really  true  of  personality  in  gen- 
eral, and  so  has  his  '  socius  '  consciousness  built  up.  Just 
in  so  far  as  the  alter  responds  differently  from  his  expecta- 
tion, that  is  something  new  in  the  alter ;  and  he  then 
shifts  about  again  to  the  learning  pole  of  the  dialectic, 
takes  up  the  imitative  attitude,  and  so  aims  to  realize  in 
himself  a  larger  revised  thought  both  of  himself  and  of  the 
other. 

It  is  a  part  of  his  constructive  tendency  that  his  inven- 
tions should  be  tested  in  just  the  same  way.  It  is  impos- 
sible for  the  child  to  rest  in  them  as  mere  thoughts  of  his 
subjective  self.  His  very  confidence  in  them  is  contin- 
gent upon  the  successful  imposition  of  them  upon  the 
alter.  "  He  is  like  me,"  we  can  fancy  the  child  saying, 
"  he  will  think  as  I  do ;  this  result  that  I  get  by  my  action 
is  fit  for  his  action  too.  I,  an  ego,  do  this  ;  if  he  be  any- 
thing of  an  ego,  let  him  do  it  also."  So  he  sets  this  trap 
for  the  alter,  by  asking  that  he  act  also  upon  the  inven- 
tion. And  just  in  so  far  as  his  thought  does  not  stand 
this  test,  so  far  as  other  persons  do  not  accept  it  and  act 
on  it,  just  so  far  does  it  become  impossible  for  the  original 
thinker  to  adhere  to  it ;  for  the  action  of  the  other  in 
departing  from  expectation  is  now  a  reacting  factor  upon 
the  thought  of  self.  My  sense  of  attraction  —  he  might 
go  on  to  say  —  toward  what  he  does  act  on,  conflicts  with 
my  very  thought  of  my  former  invention  ;  I  must  forth- 


The  Child's  Inventions  115 

with  invent  a  new  thought  of  myself  in  the  light  of  his 
action,  and  then  to  this  new  self  the  former  invention  is 
only  a  half-truth,  to  be  supplemented  by  new  lessons,  and 
then,  in  turn,  to  be  again  tested  by  the  same  social  test. 

74.  To  deny  this  would  be  to  surrender,  it  seems  to  me, 
one  of  the  main  lessons  which  we  seemed  to  learn  from 
the  growth  of  the  personal  and  social  sense ;  the  lesson 
that  the  suggestions  constantly  received  from  the  persons 
around  us  are  elements  in  the  thought  of  self,  and  through 
the  thought  of  self,  elements  also  in  the  valuation  passed 
on  all  persons  and  things.  In  the  case  of  the  child's 
invention  of  an  animal  out  of  the  outline  plan  of  the 
church,  as  narrated  above,  her  exhibition  of  it  to  others 
and  her  sense  of  their  acceptance  of  the  figure  for  an  ani- 
mal, is  a  real  and  necessary  part  of  the  true  invention. 
Suppose  those  to  whom  she  appealed  had  told  her  "  No, 
that  will  not  do  for  an  animal ;  it  has  no  head,  but  only 
a  neck,"  she  would  have  accepted  the  amendment  and 
scouted  the  construction  in  which  she  before  took  pride. 
So  when  we  do  accept  it  for  an  animal,  agreeing  with  her 
that  she  has  made  a  happy  thing,  that  is  the  confirmation 
which  it  is  a  necessary  movement  of  her  personal  devel- 
opment to  require.  It  is  in  the  same  sense  a  part  of  the 
invention  as  the  other  materials  of  it  were  in  the  first 
instance.  The  child's  sense  of  reality  or  material  truth, 
when  she  has  once  departed  from  the  purely  mechanical 
facts  which  her  native  reactions  guarantee  for  her,  involves 
this  very  element  of  social  confirmation. 

While  we  cannot  say  that  the  construction  which  the 
child  makes,  considered  simply  for  himself,  is  not  in  a 
sense  an  invention,  still  we  can  say  that  it  is  not  a  com- 
plete invention.  The  very  attempt  to  put  the  question  in 


n6  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

that  way  is  mistaken.  The  child  himself  never  attempts 
to  make  this  artificial  distinction  between  what  he  is  and 
what  he  does,  and  again  between  what  he  does  altogether 
alone  and  what  he  does  with  the  help  of  others.  His 
world  of  reality  is  one,  and  he  is  there  in  the  midst  of  it. 
He  knows  only  the  one  personal  experience  in  which  the 
two  phases  are  united  in  one  superb  series  of  progressive 
advances.  To  stop  him  off  short  without  the  social  con- 
firmation for  his  constructions  is  to  leave  him  in  that 
condition  of  permanent  hesitation,  doubt,  and  anxiety, 
which  produces,  when  forced,  all  sorts  of  personal  isola- 
tions and  often,  as  a  matter  of  fact  in  the  cases  of  adult 
patients,  ends  in  certain  forms  of  mania  known  as  the 
'insanities  of  doubt.'1 

75.  The  relative  importance  of  the  two  factors  now 
described  —  that  called  '  personal '  and  that  called  '  social ' 
—  differs  greatly  in  different  children,  and  also  at  different 
periods  in  the  life  of  the  same  child.  We  find  the  one 
child  at  times  —  some  children  constitutionally  —  develop- 
ing very  fast  in  the  direction  of  an  exaggerated  sense  of 
personal  agency,  independence,  self-confidence,  trust  in 
the  outcome  of  his  own  processes  of  thought  with  a  mini- 
mum of  social  confirmation.  This  tendency  is  seen  in 
the  phenomenon  which  has  been  lately  called  'contrary 
suggestion.'2  The  child  seems  to  rebel  against  instruc- 
tion, to  insist  upon  his  own  understanding  and  use  of 
things,  and  to  try  to  impose  his  individual  thought,  whether 

1  This  position  brings  to  mind  that  of  Royce  (Pkilos.  Jfev.,  September  to 
November,  1895),  wno  nnds  a  social  ingredient  in  the  knowledge  of  external 
nature.  My  conclusion  would  support  this,  provided  we  mean  judgments  of 
nature  in  distinction  from  the  mere  brute  contacts  with  it  which  do  not  im- 
plicate the  sense  of  the  personal  self.  Cf.  Appendix  E. 

*  Mental  Development,  Chap.  VI.,  §  6. 


The  Child's  Inventions  117 

or  no,  upon  the  persons  who  touch  his  life.  This  is,  when 
not  too  insistent,  a  healthy  sign.  It  betokens  the  rapid 
progress  of  the  assimilation  of  elements  to  his  nucleus  of 
'subject,'  which  carries  with  it  the  sense  of  agency,  power, 
and  freedom.1  The  'contrary*  boy  is  a  very  promising 
boy,  provided  he  be  not  allowed  to  domineer  when  he 
should  be  made  to  obey.  But  this  spirit  should  be  con- 
fined within  very  strait  limits ;  for  it  is  evident  that  the 
indulgence,  in  the  boy  or  girl,  of  the  sense  of  self- 
sufficiency,  will  itself  tend  to  dwarf  and  impoverish  that 
very  sense  of  self  on  which  it  is  based.  For  the  stopping 
up  of  the  avenues  of  imitation  which  it  involves,  cuts  off 
the  supply  of  higher  personal  suggestion  upon  which  the 
growth  of  the  self-sense  depends.  For  instance,  how  can 
the  ethical  sense,  which  is  essentially  a  subordination  of 
all  private  thoughts  of  self,  grow  more  competent,  when 
the  suggestions  which  stand  for  law  are  not  humbly 
received,  nor  obediently  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  also,  there  are  many — and  periods 
again  in  the  life  of  all  —  in  whom  the  second  aspect  of  the 
whole  process  of  invention  takes  on  an  exaggerated  impor- 
tance. The  need  of  social  confirmation  becomes  so  great 
to  the  child  that  his  distrust  of  his  single-handed  per- 
formances becomes  excessive  and  abnormal.  He  meets 
so  often  the  overriding  lessons  of  the  alter,  finds  his 
small  meed  of  understanding  so  insufficient  for  his  life, 
grows  so  accustomed  to  see  the  larger  wisdom  of  his  adults 
victorious  over  the  objects  and  events  of  nature  by  which, 
when  alone,  he  is  piteously  overcome,  that  he  dare  not 
stand  up  without  a  social  arm  about  him.  This  period 
of  timidity  in  most  children  follows  that  of  aggression. 
1  Cf.  Sects.  148  f.  on  '  Social  Opposition.' 


Ii8  Invention   vs.  Imitation 

In  my  two  little  girls  both  periods  have  been  well 
marked,  and  the  order  has  been  the  same  despite  very 
great  differences  in  general  disposition.  They  both  had 
the  period  of  aggression,  or  of  exaggerated  personality 
with  contrariness  in  the  third-to-fifth  half-year ;  and  this 
we  should  expect  from  the  fact  that  it  is  then  that  the 
period  of  organic  bashf ulness 1  is  coming  to  an  end.  The 
child  is  losing  his  constitutional  fear  of  persons,  and 
the  bond  of  restraint  to  the  rapid  development  of  his 
sense  of  his  own  subjective  importance  is  being  released. 
But  then  followed  in  each  of  these  children  —  though 
much  more  marked  in  the  one,  E.,  than  in  the  other — a 
period  of  extreme  social  dependence.  In  the  child  E. 
this  was  still  very  marked  in  the  fourth  year.  She  was 
never  comfortable  in  any  thought  of  her  own  until  she 
found  some  one  to  agree  with  her  in  entertaining  it.  And 
in  her  case  this  went  to  such  an  interesting  extreme  that 
she  invented  persons  out  of  inanimate  objects,  if  need  be, 
in  order  to  convince  these  imaginary  beings  of  the  truth 
of  her  thought  or  to  try  upon  them  the  working  of  a 
fancied  situation.  In  this  latter  fact,  indeed,  we  come 
upon  a  tendency  which  is  found  fully  developed  in  the 
play-instinct,  so  called,  to  which  I  shall  return  later  for 
additional  illustrations  both  of  the  general  growth  of  the 
social  sense  and  also  of  the  varied  aspects  of  the  child's 
invention.2 

76.  Further,  as  between  the  two  general  types  of  mind 
which  psychology  nowadays  finds  it  safe  to  distinguish, 
the  'sensory'  and  the  'motor,'  I  think  the  balance  be- 
tween the  two  phases  of  invention  is  pretty  well  divided. 

1  Ment.  Devel.,  Chap.  VI.,  §  6,  and  below,  Chap.  VI.,  §  2. 
*  See  below,  Chap.  IV.,  §  2. 


The  Child's  Inventions  119 

The  motor  child  is  impulsive,  imitative,  self-confident ;  his 
self-sense  takes  the  lead  in  the  progress  of  his  invention, 
and  he  is  apt  to  be  unsafe  in  the  practical  working  out  of 
his  thought.  This  tendency,  if  uncorrected  in  the  educa- 
tive stages  of  his  growth,  is  likely  to  issue  in  the  forms  of 
idiosyncrasy  which  we  find  in  the  men  whom  we  find 
'opinionated,'  intolerant,  hasty,  and  unreliable  in  mat- 
ters requiring  careful  reflection.  These  are  the  persons, 
however,  who  '  show  up '  best  in  emergencies ;  they 
arrive  at  decisions  quickly,  and  enforce  them  promptly. 

The  other  type,  the  sensory  individual,  is  likely  to  be 
inventive  in  the  more  profound  and  finished  sense  required 
by  the  second  principle  put  in  evidence  above.  His  habit 
of  getting  social  confirmation  becomes  really  a  sort  of 
second  deliberation  to  him,  which  issues  in  a  revised  and 
more  mature  thought  of  the  situation  before  him.  His 
constant  question  is :  '  What  will  my  fellow-men  think  of 
this  ? '  and  '  Will  this  work  in  society  or  in  the  mechani- 
cal sphere  of  its  intended  application  ? '  This  brings  a 
further  mass  of  content  back  upon  his  first  construction, 
and  so  leads  to  a  further  grouping  or  apperception  of  the 
situation  as  a  whole.  He  thus  gets  beyond  the  mere 
primary  dependence,  characteristic  of  the  child,  upon  the 
actual  pronouncement  of  society,  and  finds  in  himself  the 
means  of  anticipating  the  voice  of  his  social  fellows.  His 
final  confidence  thus  reached,  although  always  more  slow 
in  coming  and  less  defiant  in  its  bearing,  is  still  better 
grounded  than  that  of  the  other  type,  and  is,  in  so  far, 
more  prophetic  of  a  truthful  outcome. 

77.  We  may  sum  up  the  descriptive  account  of  the 
child's  originalities  under  a  term  which  is  sufficiently 
general  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  suffi- 


I2O  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

ciently  popular,  by  calling  them  in  all  cases  the  child's 
'  interpretations.'  The  imitative  copy  within  himself  or 
out  in  the  world  is  what  he  interprets  ;  and  into  his  inter- 
pretation goes  all  the  wealth  of  his  earlier  informations, 
his  habits,  and  his  anticipations.  The  first  interpretation 
is  the  synthesis  which  he  effects,  by  his  own  action,  of 
the  new  data  with  his  personal  growth.  But  with  this  first 
interpretation,  as  we  have  seen,  he  does  not  rest  satisfied. 
He  makes  a  second  interpretation  through  an  appeal  to 
his  social  fellows,  or  to  his  own  social  judgment.  On  the 
basis  of  the  response  which  he  gets,  a  new  synthesis  arises 
constituting  his  present  invention.  This  is  held  until  the 
whole  mass  of  elements  going  to  make  it  up  is  again  pre- 
cipitated for  another  interpretation  by  some  new  sugges- 
tion from  the  sources  of  his  knowledge.  So  he  never 
rests,  never  ceases  to  invent. 

§  3.    Selective  Thinking 

78.  The  question  which  still  remained  over  after  our 
theoretical  determinations  was  that  of  the  actual  ground 
of  the  selection  of  the  valuable  variations  which  remain 
as  truthful  thoughts  in  the  mind  of  the  child  and  the  man. 
This  was  deferred  until  we  should  have  examined  the 
actual  inventions  of  the  child.  I  think  the  result  of 
our  examination  justifies  in  a  measure  the  expectation 
that  some  light  would  come  to  us.  For  we  have  found 
the  child  making  his  selections  of  the  things  which  he  will 
finally  think  to  be  true  under  certain  leading  rules. 

i.  ///  tin-  realm  of  social  suggestion  we  find  that  the 
new  thoughts  are  functions  of  the  personal  self.  Only 
those  things  which  the  child  can  assimilate,  by  imitation, 
in  his  own  personal  growth  become  true  to  him  ;  he  can 


Selective   Thinking  121 

hold  true  of  others,  and  of  persons  generally,  only  those 
things  which  he  can  master  by  his  own  imitative  action, 
and  make  true  of  himself. 

2.  Of  other   truths,    whether    directly    attributable    to 
persons  or  not,  only  those  come  to  be  real  and  valid  to 
him  which  hold  for  others  also.     This  means  that  in  all 
his  thinking,  if  his  thoughts  are  to  be  of  value,  and  to  be 
selected  as  true,  his  thought  of  self  is  so  far  implicated  that 
it  is  a  personal  achievement ;  it  must  stand  liable  to  incur 
the  inspection  of   the  alter  whose  existence  is  ejectively 
guaranteed   by   the   thought   of   self.      This   demand   for 
social   confirmation   is  what  we  should   expect   from  the 
dialectic  of  personal  growth  in  all  cases  in  which  the  con- 
viction involved  is  in  any  sense  an  expression  of  a  per- 
sonal attitude. 

3.  These  results  fall  in  with  the  analyses  of  belief  and 
judgment  made   by  recent  writers.      In  an  earlier  work 
the  outcome  of  such  an  analysis  has   been    expressed  in 
these   words :    "  Belief    is    the    personal    endorsement   of 
reality";1  and  belief  and  judgment  are  there  considered 
different  phases  of  the  going-out  of  the  motor  processes  of 
impulse  and  'need'  upon  their  objects.2     Without  assum- 
ing this  view  with  reference  to  all  judgments, — although 
I  think  it  is  true,  —  we  may  yet  say :  in  so  far  as  a  per- 
sonal attitude  is  involved   in  a  judgment,   in   so  far  the 
organization   of   the  personal  self  is   the  ground  of   the 
selection  of  the  particular  thought  as  true?     And,  further, 

1  Baldwin,  Handbook  of  Psychology,  Feeling  and  Will,  p.  158.  See  Ormond, 
'The  Negative  in  Logic'  (Psych.  Rev.,  May,  1867);  also  the  newer  logicians, 
Brentano,  Sigwart,  who  tend  to  identify  judgment  with  the  belief  attitude  of 
mind. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  171  ;   also  Bain  and  Stout. 

8  This  is  intimated  jn   the   treatment   of  my  Handbook  in   the.se   words: 


122  Invention   vs.  Imitation 

when  the  self-thought  is  thus  the  nucleus  of  organization, 
there  the  social  criterion  of  truth  must  also  be  in  force. 

The  general  conclusion  is,  therefore,  that  there  is  a 
great  sphere  of  truth,  of  selective  thinking,  of  inventions 
judged  true,  of  mental  constructions  believed,  in  which  the 
criterion  of  selection  is  all  along  availability  for  imitative 
social  assimilation  in  the  growth  of  the  thought  of  self ; 
and  unless  in  some  spheres  we  be  able  to  find  other  com- 
pelling criteria  of  truth,  we  shall  have  to  say  the  same  of 
all  selective  thinking.1 

"  Amid  the  variations  of  composite  and  varying  reality,  the  most  fixed  point  of 
reference  is  the  feeling  of  self.  All  reality  is  given  us  through  our  own  expe- 
rience, and  the  centre  of  experience  is  self  and  its  needs."  (Lot.  fit.,  p.  170.) 
1  This  last  clause  expresses  the  probability,  in  my  personal  view.  The 
further  interesting  question  arises  (and  would  demand  discussion  but  for  our 
limitation  to  social  interpretations),  what  relation  such  a  principle  of  selec- 
tion in  the  realm  of  thought  bears  to  the  ordinary  utility-selection  as  operative 
in  organic  accommodation.  Dr.  Urban's  paper  already  referred  to  (Psych. 
Review,  July,  1897)  discusses  the  question  of  utility  briefly.  Without  going 
into  details,  I  may  say  that  the  criterion  of  utility  is  preserved  in  both  of  the 
aspects  of  selective  thinking  pointed  out  in  the  text.  I.  In  thinking,  the  agent 
of  accommodation  is  the  attention,  which  has  its  own  pleasure  and  pain  tone, 
and  in  the  production  of  the  variations  from  which  the  true  thoughts  are 
selected,  the  attention  represents  the  motor  habits  in  which  —  according  to  the 
general  point  of  view  developed  above  (§  55)  — the  variations  primarily  take 
place.  Cf.  my  Mental  Development,  pp.  312  f.,  331  f.,  for  evidence  of  varia- 
tions in  the  attention  complex.  Accommodation  of  the  attention  is  necessary 
to  all  thinking.  It  is  by  restless  and  energetic  attention  upon  old  knowledges 
that  the  new  thoughts  come.  The  variety  of  attention  modes  dictates  the 
variety  of  new  thoughts.  It  is  this  accommodation  which  constitutes  the 
child's  reception  and  absorption  of  relatively  abstract  and  theoretical  new 
material.  It  is  the  more  formal  utility  element,  which  we  might  conceive  to 
be  still  present  in  case  further  social  ratification  were  not  available.  But,  2,  the 
social  criterion  is  also  a  direct  utility  requirement.  His  need  of  learning  is  to 
the  child  his  most  strenuous  need;  and  social  sources  are  his  first  and  last,  in 
Irnrning  the  lessons  of  his  life.  I  should  say,  therefore,  that  selective  thinking 
does  fall  under  the  law  of  utility-selection. — The  selection  of  true  thoughts 
of  the  external  world  is  made  by  the  accommodation  of  organic  movement, 
which  proceeds  by  the  '  functional  selection  of  overproduced  movements ' 


Private  Judgment  123 

§  4.    Private  Judgment 

79.  In  the  earlier  chapter  we  had  reason,  from  an  objec- 
tive point  of  view,  for  finding  a  certain  'social  judgment ' 
current  in  each  society,  represented  by  public  opinion,  and 
coming  out  in  the  attitudes  of  individuals  in  situations  of 
social  moment.  We  called  its  exercise  in  the  individual 
'judgment'  by  a  certain  license,  and  in  deference  to  popu- 
lar usage.  It  seemed  to  us  well  to  say  that  the  socially 
eligible  and  competent  person  was  a  man  of  'good  judg- 
ment '  in  the  relations  and  circumstances  of  his  social  life. 

In  what  has  gone  before  in  this  chapter  we  have  now 
seen  something  of  the  rise  of  selective  thinking  in  the 
mind  of  the  individual.  It  has  seemed  to  proceed,  at  least 
in  those  cases  which  involve  the  implication,  to  however 
slight  an  extent,  of  the  personal  thought  and  interest  of 
the  man  or  child,  by  imitation.  And  this  examination, 
conducted  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  conditions  of  the 
rise  of  selective  thinking  in  the  person  himself,  led  us  to 
see  that  his  criterion  all  the  way  along  is  necessarily  —  in 
so  far  as  he  reaches  mature  convictions  of  truth  — a  social 
criterion.  Further,  this  sense  of  personal  security  in  a 

(Ment.  Devel.,  p.  179).  This,  then,  has  its  identical  principle  in  the  accom- 
modation of  the  attention  in  thinking;  and  in  thinking,  in  so  far  at  least  as 
it  proceeds  by  social  stimulations,  we  find  the  further  selective  function  of 
judgment,  in  the  way  we  have  described.  Dr.  Urban  thinks  that  the  utility 
principle  gets  no  application  to  the  theoretical  relationships  discovered  inside 
a  whole  of  knowledge,  although  the  whole,  as  a  concrete  whole,  is  selected  on 
the  utility  principle.  But  it  would  seem  that  the  parts  are  themselves  possible 
wholes,  and  could  not  have  been  established  otherwise,  and  the  relations  have 
already  been  '  selected.'  I  see  no  other  possible  natural  history  account  of 
theoretical  knowledge.  I  think  Dr.  Urban's  view  on  this  point  is  influenced  by 
his  acceptance  of  the  '  obstruction  of  energy '  theory  of  the  origin  of  thought, 
which  I  have  criticised  above  (§  57,  note). 


124  Invention  vs.  Imitation 

thought,  of  personal  endorsement  of  it,  is  what  is  called  in 
psychology  '  judgment.' 

80.  It  is  now  a  simple  matter  to  let  these  two  points  of 
view  give  to  each    other  a  certain  mutual  confirmation. 
The  '  social  judgment'  is,  when  looked  at  from  the  side  of 
its  currency  in  society,  —  and  named  therefor,  —  one  and 
the  same  with  the  private   judgment  of   the  individuals 
which  make  the  society  up.     The  social  criterion  of  selec- 
tion in  private  judgment  is  just  the  bridge  between  the  two 
sets  of  values,  public  and  private.     The  social  judgment 
gets  its  competence  from  the  common  absorption  of  the 
same  imitative  copies  by  all  the  individuals  ;  and  the  indi- 
vidual's private  judgment  gets  its  social  validity  from  the 
conditions  of  its  social  origin. 

It  is  only  then  in  a  relative  sense  that  the  private  judg- 
ment is  private  ;  and  it  is  only  in  a  relative  sense  that  the 
public  judgment  is  public ;  for  in  the  main  they  are  the 
same.1 

81.  But  it  may  be  asked:  Is  it  true  that  our  private 
judgments  have  the  social  ingredient  attributed  to  them  ? 
Are  we  not  competent  to  solve  problems  by  sheer  private 
thinking,  and  then  to  know  that  the  solution  is  true  by 
sheer  private  conviction  ?  —  both  with  no  reference  to  any- 
body else  ?     The  fuller  answer  to  this  question  will  appear 
as  our  development  proceeds  ;  but  it  may  be  well  to  make 
two  general  statements  in  reference  to  this  possibility. 

i.  However  independent  one's  private  judgment  may 
be,  and  however  strenuously  in  opposition  it  may  seem  to 
the  views  current  in  society,  yet  he  who  thus  judges  as- 
sumes, all  the  way  through,  the  common  standards  of 

1  This  might  be  called  in  a  sense  a  '  social  deduction  of  the  category  of 
universality/  to  speak  in  a  Kantian  phrase  borrowed  from  Professor  Royce. 


Private  Judgment  125 

truth  and  error  which  society  also  assumes.  The  position 
taken  above  does  not  result  in  detracting  in  the  least  from 
the  competency  of  the  individual's  judgments.  It  only 
seeks  to  state  the  influences  which  have  worked  to  enable 
him  to  build  up  his  competent  judgments.  Here  as  else- 
where habit  comes  to  rule.  Good  habits  of  judgment  tell 
in  individuals.  Hereditary  differences  are  great.  And  it 
is  no  argument  against  the  position  taken  above,  to  cite 
cases  of  private  judgment  which  seem  competent.  That 
I  shall  myself  do  later  on. 

2.  I  have  admitted  the  possibility  of  the  establishing  of 
other  criteria  of  truth  in  other  fields  of  knowledge.  At 
least  we  do  not  need  to  pass  on  that  question  now  :  An  a 
priori  philosopher  may  say  that  mathematical  knowledge 
is  not  at  all  subject  to  social  confirmation.  Let  him  believe 
it.  What  is  essential  for  our  position  is  that,  so  far  as  the 
individual's  knowledge  is  subject  to  a  process  of  selective 
development  in  experience,  so  far  that  knowledge  is  not 
reached  exclusively  by  private  tests.  The  development  is 
guided  in  part  by  sociaV  tests  ;  and  the  judgments  of  truth 
which  arise  in  the  individual  in  the  progress  of  it  are,  in 
so  far,  social  judgments. 


CHAPTER   IV 
SOCIAL  AIDS  TO  INVENTION 

82.  WITH  the  view  which  we  have  now  reached  of  the 
nature  of  invention  in  the  child,  we  are  prepared  to  trace 
its  growth  with  his,  and  to  point  out  the  main  aids  to  its 
progress  in  his  life-history. 

The  child  differs  from  the  young  animal  mainly  in  this 
feature :  the  thought  of  himself  as  a  personal  being.  It 
is  in  those  functions  through  which  his  personal  growth 
proceeds  that  we  should  expect  to  find  his  life  mainly  dif- 
ferentiated from  the  brutes.  If  the  foregoing  account  be 
true  of  the  method  of  the  personal  growth  of  the  child,  of 
his  progress  in  his  thought  of  himself,  the  means  which 
his  environment  offers  for  the  satisfaction  of  his  demands 
should  stand  out  most  prominently,  both  in  the  contrast 
with  the  animal's  environment,  and  also  as  prominent 
per  se.  There  should  be  a  premium  put,  in  society, 
upon  the  formal  or  conventional  modes  of  action  which 
give  constant  patterns  and  supports  to  the  child's  need 
of  progressive  realization  of  himself  and  of  knowledge  of 
the  world ;  and  there  should  be  equally  a  general  mode 
of  social  expression,  a  method  of  bringing  his  acquisi- 
tions to  the  social  test ;  these  two  features  of  the  social 
whole  being  in  their  origin  themselves  the  outcome  of 
the  very  demand  to  which  at  every  stage  of  progress 
they  are  found  to  minister.  The  child  must  at  every 

126 


Language  127 

stage  have  some  general  imitative  copies  before  him, 
already  realized  in  society ;  he  must  reproduce  these  in 
his  own  growth.  And  the  extent  to  which  he  can  go,  with 
the  vis  a  tergo  of  heredity  behind  him,  depends  upon  the 
degree  in  which  his  social  environment  is  itself  a  thing  of 
set  and  formulated  convention.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
active  method,  both  of  his  learning  amid  the  conventions 
of  the  family,  school,  etc.,  and  of  the  setting  of  his  habits 
in  the  forms  of  social  warrant  and  utility,  must  have  some 
general  modes  of  issue  also  common  to  the  social  group  as 
a  whole.  Both  these  functions  are  served  pre-eminently 
by  speech;  and  in  them,  taken  together,  I  think  the  true 
philosophy  of  speech  is  to  be  found.  Not  only  is  this  true 
of  the  development  of  speech  in  the  individual  child, — 
its  ontogenetic  phase ;  but  it  holds  also  of  the  origin  and 
development  of  speech  in  the  race  —  its  phylogenetic 
phase.1  We  may  confine  our  inquiry  for  the  present  to 
the  social  function  of  learning  and  expression  in  the 
child,  by  means  of  the  acquisition  and  use  of  spoken 
language. 

First,  we  may  consider  the  acquisition  of  language  by 
the  child  and  the  lessons  of  it  in  his  progress  as  a  personal 
and  inventive  being ;  and  second,  the  use  which  he  makes 
of  speech,  and  its  lessons  as  well.  These  two  topics,  it  is 
plain,  carry  farther  the  distinction  between  '  imitative '  and 
'  social '  invention  already  dwelt  upon.2 

1  Avenarius  makes  speech  the  great  means  of  '  introjection '  in  its  historical 
development :  Mensch.  Weltbegriff,  p.  44. 

2  The   consideration    of  speech,   as   well   as   of  play   and    art,    as   social 
instrument,  must   be  very  sketchy  in  a   single    chapter,   and    the    following 
general  indications  should  be  considered  only  as  suggestions. 


128  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

§  i.    Language 

83.  I.    The  Method  of  Learning  Language. — All  the 
theories  of   the  child's    procedure  in  acquiring   language 
are  based  upon  the  very  evident   fact  that  speech  is  an 
imitative   function.     This    is    so   evidently  true  that    the 
temptation  is  strong  to  use  speech  in  all  cases  to  illustrate 
imitation   at    its  purest.     The   process  of  association  by 
which  the  child  gradually  gets  the  sounds  of  words  heard 
connected   with    his   own    lip   and   tongue   sensations   in 
speaking  the  same  words,  and  then  uses  his  own  sounds 
to  control  the  muscular  movements,  instead  of  still  wait- 
ing for  the  voices  of   others,  —  these  processes  are  also 
commonly  recognized,  and  I  shall  not  delay  upon  them. 
Neither   do   I    propose   to    institute   an   inquiry  into  the 
phonetics   of   the   infant's   progress   with   language,    ask- 
ing what  letters  he  learns  first,  last,  and  between.     All 
that  is  beside  the  present  problem,  interesting  and  impor- 
tant as  it  is  in  itself.     The  aspect  of  the  case  to  which 
attention  is  now  directed  is  a  different  one  and  one  not  so 
commonly  discussed  ;  indeed,  I  do  not  know  of  any  dis- 
cussions of  just  the  function  of  the  child's  particular  imita- 
tions of  speech-sounds,  in  enabling  him  to  come  first  into 
the  language  tradition  and  through  that  into  all  the  social 
heritage  of  his  people. 

84.  The  use  made  by  the  child  of  the  language  of  those 
about  him  is  at  first  quite  unreflective ;  that  is,  the  use  for 
his  own  direct  imitations.     He  gets,  it  is  true,  a  large  and 
varied  sense  of   the  meanings  of  words,  such  as  'papa,' 
'mamma,'  'spoon,'  'baby,'  'chair,'  etc.,  as  used  by  other  per- 
sons before  he  shows  at  all  the  tendency  to  acquire  speech 
for  himself.     He  learns  also  a  great  variety  of  associations 


Language  129 

between  words  which  he  hears  and  things  which  lie  about 
him ;  all  this  is  part  of  the  general  system  of  sugges- 
tions which  his  passing  life-panorama  of  things  and  events 
impresses  upon  him.  This  indicates  on  the  organic  side 
the  great  readiness  of  his  nerve  machinery  to  undertake 
the  tasks  of  life.  His  active  life  is  somewhat  behind  the 
receptive ;  that  is,  somewhat  less  formed  at  the  begin- 
ning of  his  career.  So  he  brings  to  his  first  lessons  in 
active  imitation  a  certain  mass  of  informations  which  are 
ready  to  cluster  up  upon  his  further  acquisitions  and 
assimilate  them.  Here  we  find  in  the  child  himself, 
therefore,  a  certain  body  of  well-knitted  meshes  or  nets 
ready  to  catch  his  newly  acquired  '  copies '  as  he  repro- 
duces them  from  out  the  environment,  and  to  give  them 
meaning  in  terms  of  safe  knowledge.  This  is  the  sort  of 
first  interpretation  or  personal  invention  already  signalized 
above. 

85.  But  as  soon  as  the  child  begins  to  imitate  things 
seen  or  heard,  he  strikes  into  perfect  gold-mines,  of  the 
richness  of  which  he  knows  nothing ;  mines  in  which  the 
wisdom  and  growth  of  ages  of  ancestral  life  are  hidden  in 
nuggets  of  purest  intellectual  ore.  His  efforts,  it  is  true, 
merely  scratch  the  surface.  All  his  learning  is  but  find- 
ing out  the  deeper  and  ever-deeper  meaning  of  the  surface- 
exposed  strata.  This  we  have  seen  in  tracing  the  very 
gradual  development  of  the  sense  of  self.  He  has  to  go 
through  a  series  of  very  remarkable  insights,  directed 
now  outward,  now  inward,  now  outward  again,  all  bring- 
ing him  to  a  fuller  and  fuller  apprehension  of  what  people 
are  and  what  their  actions  mean.  So  it  is  with  every 
category  of  his  learning ;  and  most  of  all  so  of  his  learning 
to  speak. 


130  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

The  case  of  this  function  is  the  more  important  and 
interesting  since  not  only  is  it  the  way  of  his  learning 
language  in  itself,  but  it  is  then  through  speech  that  he 
goes  on  to  learn  almost  everything  else.  Speech  has  its 
main  value  not  as  an  exercise  in  itself,  but  as  an  instru- 
ment ;  yet  it  has  first  to  be  learned  as  any  other  function 
has  to  be  —  it  has  to  be  first  itself  an  acquisition  —  in 
order  then  to  be  available  for  the  uses  it  goes  on  to  sub- 
serve. And  the  way  of  getting  to  speak  by  imitation  is 
itself  perhaps  the  profoundest  pedagogical  influence  in  the 
child's  mental  history. 

His  instinctive  imitation  of  word-sounds  opens  a  door  to 
the  entrance  of  word-meanings.  His  rapport  with  the  per- 
son who  speaks  to  him  is  a  little  fuller,  a  little  more  sym- 
pathetic, when  the  child  can  utter  the  same  word.  His 
utterance  of  it  leads  to  the  common  observation  of  the 
thing  the  word  denotes ;  to  the  common  doing  of  the  act 
which  it  describes.  Further,  the  rapport  thus  established 
now  extends  away  from  the  individual  thing,  at  first  pres- 
ent at  the  learning.  The  distant  object,  the  past  or  future 
event,  can  now  be  referred  to.  So  the  basis  is  laid  for  a 
new  word-lesson  :  the  lesson  of  the  relation  of  the  object 
which  is  now  here  on  one  hand,  to  that  on  the  other  hand 
which,  though  not  here,  yet  can  be  brought  here  in  its 
meaning  and  memory  by  the  use  of  the  word  which  has 
been  earlier  acquired.  So  also  can  the  relations  of  space 
be  spanned  by  thought  through  this  wonderful  instrumen- 
tality, just  as  those  of  time  are.  Not  that  the  child  does 
not  remember  his  past  without  uttering  his  memories  in 
speech  or  before  he  can  utter  them  ;  but  that  he  does  not 
make  these  memories  of  his  past  the  basis  of  the  further 
extension  of  that  personal  understanding  with  the  others 


Language  131 

from  whom  his  learning  proceeds  and  by  which  his  own 
thought  of  himself  and  the  world  must  grow.  It  is  because 
the  parent  or  teacher  has  more  lessons  for  him  to  learn  — 
because  they  are  familiar  with  the  relations  of  time,  space, 
cause,  etc.  —  that  it  is  important  for  him  to  learn  the  pres- 
ent words.  His  progress  in  thinking  is  to  be  like  their 
progress  before  him,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  their  prog- 
ress is  embodied  in  their  language.  They  cannot  impart 
their  learning  except  in  the  moulds  in  which  they  have 
learned  ;  so  in  his  learning  he  must  get  the  meaning  of 
the  word  now  set  before  him  before  he  can  grow  into  a 
further  set  of  meanings.1 

The  essential  function  of  language,  therefore,  on  the 
side  of  its  acquisition  by  the  child,  is  this  pedagogical 
or  'leading-string'  function.  The  child  does  not  have  to 
explore  the  relations  of  things  for  himself ;  this  his  ances- 
tors have  done  for  him,  and  their  discoveries  have  been 
embodied  in  language.  Then  he  comes  upon  the  scene 
with  the  hereditary  capacity  for  speech,  and  the  tendency, 
also  hereditary,  to  imitate.  So  of  course  he  falls  into  the 
speech  of  his  social  elders  and  so  finds  himself,  before 
he  knows  it,  and  without  any  necessity  of  understanding 
it,  right  in  the  midst  of  a  most  intricate  network  of 
social  relationships  directly  available  to  him  by  the  use 
of  the  words  picked  up  by  pleasant  and  playful  imita- 
tion. 

For  example,  he  learns  the  word  '  knife,'  perhaps,  from 
his  table  experiences  repeated  daily ;  then  he  is  told  '  the 

1The  truth  of  this  is  seen  in  the  difficulty  found  in  teaching  deaf  and  dumb 
children.  Methods  have  to  be  devised  which  are  foreign  to  the  teacher's  own 
normal  modes  of  expression.  Instead  of  natural  social  relations,  these  are 
conventions  which  are  artificial,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  teacher  himself. 


132  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

knife  cuts,'  when,  by  a  slip  of  his  fingers,  he  has  come  in 
the  way  of  his  nurse's  brandishments  of  that  instrument. 
Now,  by  holding  on  to  these  two  words  '  knife  cuts,'  he 
is  enabled  to  do  at  once  what  probably  represents  a  long 
series  of  race  experiences  in  the  learning  of  meanings  and 
relationships  in  nature.  He  'conceives'  the  thing  knife, 
since  he  is  able  to  put  into  it,  by  means  of  his  own  per- 
sonal growth,  a  general  meaning  or  expectation.  Speech  is 
his  means  of  doing  this,  because  it  is,  in  the  first  instance, 
the  race's  means  of  doing  this,  and  unless  the  race  had 
developed  some  general  way  of  doing  it,  neither  could  he. 
It  prepares  him  at  once  for  the  further  understanding 
of  the  increasing  and  differing  instances  of  both  the  ideas 
thus  crudely  learned.  And  his  knowledge  then  proceeds 
from  the  more  general,  the  safer,  to  the  less  general,  the 
concrete,  the  more  risky.  What  I  mean  by  this  last 
remark  may  be  brought  out  a  little  more  fully. 

86.  Suppose  the  child  beginning  with  no  tendency  to 
generalize  his  experience  with  the  knife ;  he  would  then 
not  expect  other  knives,  hatchets,  tools  with  sharp  edges, 
to  cut  him.  He  would  put  them  all  to  the  same  test, 
either  intentionally  or  by  the  accidents  arising  from  his 
failure  to  apply  the  lesson  of  the  earlier  knife,  and  the 
result  would  be  that  he  would  be  cut  again  and  again. 
And  should  he  extend  this  haphazard  experience  of  learn- 
ing for  himself  to  all  the  provinces  of  his  action,  it  becomes 
plain  that  his  life  would  not  suffice  to  teach  him  the  things 
he  most  needs  to  know.  He  would  be  forever  falling  by 
the  wayside  from  the  shock  of  evils  which,  as  it  is,  he 
readily  anticipates  and  avoids.  We  may  call  this  a  sort  of 
generalization,  and  see  in  it,  as  we  do,  a  case  of  personal 
accommodation  by  the  use  of  a  single  copy  of  great  gener- 


Language  133 

ality  for  a  group  of  similar  experiences.  It  seems  to  dis- 
tinguish the  child  from  the  young  animal ;  not,  indeed, 
merely  as  the  perception  of  resemblance  (Morgan),  or  asso- 
ciation by  resemblance  (James)  —  both  of  these,  I  think, 
many  animals  clearly  have  —  and  not  indeed  by  any  im- 
passable gulf  in  nature ;  but  as  indicating  the  direction 
which  development  has  taken,  whereby  the  child's  kind 
have  become  animals  which  reflect,  while  the  others  have 
not.  I  think  that  Romanes  is  right  in  holding  it  possible 
that  the  direction  given  to  development  through  the  first 
rude  uses  of  movements  for  personal  expression  was  really 
the  direction  taken  by  man,  the  reasoning  creature,  in  dis- 
tinction from  the  lower  animals  that  do  not  speak  nor 
reason.1  Speech  is  the  crown  and  climax  of  expressive 
movements,  and  by  it  development  took  on  its  highest 
social  and  personal  phase.2 

87.  The  child's  main  business  with  words  is  the  absorp- 
tion of  meanings,  rather  than  the  discovery  of  them.  The 
discovery  is  a  matter  of  social  usage,  which  comes  to  him 
in  great  generalizations.  The  child  has  thrust  upon  him 
words  used  in  their  general  significations ;  he  invents 
general  situations  or  meanings  to  interpret  the  general 
speech  which  he  hears  ;  in  this  he  shows  all  the  aptitude 
arising  from  his  hereditary  readiness  for  the  race  progress 
which  the  speech  he  hears  itself  embodies ;  his  happy 
responses  are  encored  and  he  clings  to  them  as  useful 

1  And  he  is  also  in  accord  with  the  text  (see  Sects.  78,  82)  in  the  position 
that  the  essential  distinction  between  man  and  the  brute  "  truly  consists  .  .  . 
in  the  power  to  think  which  is  given  by  introspective  reflection  in  the  light  of 
self-consciousness"  {Menial  Rvol.  in  Man,  p.  175),  and  he  finds  this  "in  its 
simplest  manifestation  .  .  .  in  judgment "  (ibid.,  p.  178). 

2  In  another  place  {Mental  Devel.,  Chap.  IV.)  I  have  reached  the  conclu- 
sion that  right-handedness  originally  served  purposes  of  expressive  movement. 


134  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

things.  Indeed,  one  of  the  most  striking  phenomena  of 
infant  speech  is  the  way  in  which  the  child  uses  a  newly 
acquired  word  to  cover  objects  which  present  only  the 
most  vague  and  incidental  resemblance  to  the  right  one. 
The  books  on  child-psychology  are  full  of  instances,  and  I 
need  not  cite  more.  The  boy  learns  that  my  knee  is  a 
'knee.'  He  forthwith  begins  to  look  upon  the  corner  of 
the  table  as  a  '  knee ' ;  so  is  the  end  of  the  stick  of  fire- 
wood a  '  knee ' ;  the  mountain  becomes  a  '  big  knee,'  and 
the  pencil  should  have  its  'little  knee'  sharpened.  All 
this  is  his  first  interpretation,  the  generalization  which 
he  falls  into  by  all  the  force  of  race  history  and  habitual 
reaction.  These  objects  fulfil  the  conditions  of  the  first 
apprehension  of  '  knee,'  which  issued  in  the  fortunate 
utterance  of  the  word  ;  so  all  of  them  also  become  it. 
So  far  we  now  understand:  this  is  the  'leading-string' 
function  of  language,  just  to  lead  him  forward  into  this 
error  of  generalization.  The  power  to  generalize  is  a  part 
of  his  endowment ;  it  is  his  gift  of  originality,  in  so  far. 

88.  II.  The  Uses  of  Language.  —  We  may  say  at  the 
outset  that  the  child's  uses  of  language  illustrate  very 
plainly  the  second  kind  of  invention  described  above  as 
'social.'  It  consists  in  a  series  of  second  interpretations 
of  words  on  the  basis  of  the  first  interpretation  made  in 
the  way  already  described.  The  child's  progress  is  by 
delimitation  of  the  areas  over  which  he  may  apply  words. 
This  comes  about  in  his  further  experience  in  the  applica- 
tion of  his  newly  acquired  terms.  He  finds  himself  strain- 
ing the  meanings  of  them  in  his  efforts  to  make  himself 
understood  by  others.  When  he  speaks  of  the  'knee' 
of  the  table,  I  fail  to  understand  him,  perhaps,  and  he 
sees  that  his  first  apprehension  is  in  some  way  not  that 


Language  1 35 

which  gets  social  confirmation.  So  he  abandons  his  first 
interpretation,  and  either  asks  me  why  a  table-corner  is 
not  a  knee,  or  shows  me  by  pointing  what  he  means  in 
speaking  of  the  table's  knee,  or  waits  to  hear  in  my  further 
conversation  the  distinctions  which  resolve  the  puzzle  for 
him.  His  tise  of  speech  is  a  constant  test  of  the  inventive 
interpretations  already  made  through  imitation. 

His  progress  is  the  reverse  of  that  of  the  ordinary 
psychological  doctrine  of  conception,  i.e.,  that  it  proceeds 
from  the  particular  to  the  universal.  It  is  from  the  more 
to  the  less  general  constantly.1  He  circumscribes  his 
meanings  by  the  very  necessity  of  the  use  of  language 
—  the  necessity  of  being  understood. 

This  leads  him  on  then  to  the  second  interpretation 
found  in  all  valid  invention.  Speech  of  all  things  must 
work  in  society.  And  just  in  so  far  as,  after  each  test,  the 
meaning  given  to  a  word  is  found  to  be  wrong,  too  inclu- 
sive, and  in  so  far  as  he  then  gets  a  new  sense  of  the  right 
conditions  for  a  new  sense  of  the  meaning,  to  that  degree 
he  makes  a  new  meaning,  a  new  invention,  only  to  find  it 
subject,  as  the  old  one  was,  to  the  tests  of  actual  usage 
in  his  social  group. 

89.  We  find  that  when  he  does  this,  when  he  uses  a 
word  with  a  question  on  his  face,  waiting  to  see  its  fate  in 
the  understanding  and  critical  treatment  of  others,  then 
the  first  function  of  language,  the  'leading-string'  function, 
gets  a  new  chance.  The  parent  or  teacher  may  now  avail 
himself  of  the  child's  error  to  lead  him  into  all  truth. 
I  hasten  to  inform  the  child  that  the  table  has  no  knees, 

1  And  prevailingly  at  this  early  period  ;  of  course  the  other  process  is  also 
real,  but  it  characterizes  a  later  period,  i.e.,  that  of  logical  rather  than  verbal 
instruction.  Cf.  the  process  called  '  erosion  '  in  Mental  Development,  p.  328. 


136  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

and  why.  I  make  the  occasion  which  reveals  his  wrong 
interpretation  the  occasion,  also,  of  a  new  lesson  whereby 
he  takes  up  new  elements  of  social  suggestion  for  the 
refining  of  his  words,  and  through  them  of  his  knowledge. 
There  is  no  end,  of  course,  to  this  give-and-take  between 
the  child  and  me ;  he  takes  what  I  give,  and  gives  it  back 
in  his  own  form  of  assimilation  or  invention,  only  to  have 
his  construction  rejected  by  me  with  further  directions 
whereby  he  may  make  it  conform  better  to  the  demands 
of  the  developed  system  of  meanings  which  I  have  already 
acquired  by  precisely  the  same  process.  So  his  second 
interpretation  becomes  in  turn  a  first  interpretation  for 
another  second.  And  so  on  indefinitely. 

So  speech  is  genetically  an  aid  of  the  first  importance 
in  the  development  of  knowledge,  and  illustrates  well  the 
social  factor  which  we  have  called  'judgment'  above.  Fur- 
ther I  need  not  go  in  this  connection.  Yet  the  point  should 
not  be  overlooked  that  in  this  development,  the  method 
of  the  acquisition  of  language  is  that  of  the  organic  growth 
of  the  person  as  a  whole,  considered  in  his  social  relation- 
ships. The  child  learns  himself  and  his  alter,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  reacting  upon  constant  suggestions  from  the  alter 
personalities  about  him.  We  now  see  that  speech  is,  after 
the  first  year  or  more  of  his  life,  the  great  vehicle  of  such 
suggestions,  and  consequently  the  great  engine  of  his  per- 
sonal development.  When  it  is  no  longer  a  matter  of 
learning  speech,  it  is  yet  a  matter  of  learning  through 
speech.  Both  the  process  of  taking  up  the  projective  into 
the  subjective  ego,  and  that  of  ejecting  the  subjective  into 
the  alter-ego,  get  their  principal  material  through  language. 
By  their  speech  he  learns  of  others,  and  by  his  speech  he 
teaches  others  of  himself. 


Language  137 

90.  III.  The  Uses  of  Reading  and  Hand^vr^t^ng. —  The 
position  now  assigned  to  speech  in  the  social  evolution  of 
the  child  gets  farther  confirmation  from  the  examination 
of  those  variations  of  this  function  found  in  reading  and 
handwriting.  In  reading  we  find  the  receptive  state  of 
mind  necessary  to  imitative  invention  very  greatly  empha- 
sized. Handwriting,  on  the  other  hand,  and  with  it  all 
the  forms  of  inscription,  printing,  etc.,  into  which  it  has 
developed  in  the  advanced  social  organization  of  civilized 
peoples,  represents  the  other  pole,  —  that  of  expressive 
utility.  Handwriting  is  to  the  writer  in  the  first  instance 
—  as  printing  and  publishing  are  to  the  author  —  the 
means  of  submitting  the  results  of  his  invention  to  the 
social  tests,  the  nature  of  which  we  have  already  dwelt 
upon.  The  child  writes  in  his  copy-book  for  the  criticism 
of  his  teacher.  He  writes  to  his  friend,  both  as  a  child 
and  later  as  an  adult,  for  the  expression  of  his  thought ; 
but  his  expression  is  worthy  and  represents  invention  only 
as  his  friend's  criticism  tolerates  and  exploits  it.  If  he 
thus  become  an  author  and  his  productions  be  fixed  in  the 
permanent  form  of  print  or  archives,  he  is  then  appealing 
to  a  larger  constituency  of  critics,  and  for  a  judgment 
extending  over  a  longer  period  of  time.  This  then  is 
literature.  It  is  the  permanent  series  of  recorded  inven- 
tions in  form  and  matter  by  which  society  has  gradually 
enriched  itself,  and  to  which  society  has  subjected  itself 
as  to  a  great  series  of  limitations  put  upon  its  inventive 
power. 

Then  as  to  reading  —  the  child  not  only  learns  to  read, 
but  he  learns  to  assimilate  the  thoughts  he  reads.  In 
learning  merely  to  read,  he  is  learning  to  reinvent  for  him- 
self the  forms  of  language,  just  as  we  have  seen  him  doing 


138  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

it  also  in  learning  to  speak.  But  in  reading,  the  '  copy- 
system,'  so  to  speak,  the  gauges,  controls,  relationships, 
are  richer  than  in  his  speech.  For  in  the  former  he  is  no 
longer  compelled  to  wait  for  the  presence  of  his  father  or 
mother  to  give  him  the  forms  of  correct  discourse,  and  to 
give  them  to  him  in  forms  not  always  correct.  His  books 
are  a  graded  series  of  wisely  arranged  forms  of  increasing 
complexity,  and  in  them  he  has  the  slow  processes  of 
acquisition  set  out  for  his  development  as  fast  as  the 
growth  of  his  inventive  powers  enables  him  to  utilize  them. 
And  having  thus  transcended  the  forms  of  usage  in  his 
own  social  circte,  he  goes  on,  by  the  supply  of  literature  in 
the  library  to  which  he  has  access,  to  transcend  as  well  the 
commonplace  thought  of  daily  life,  in  the  community  in 
which  he  lives. 

So  by  his  reading  and  his  writing  he  assimilates,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  expresses  himself  socially  for  the  judgment 
of  his  fellows,  on  the  other  hand.  And  these  are  the 
two  fields,  assimilation  and  expression,  in  which  we  have 
seen  invention  to  have  its  place  in  the  development  of 
personality.  This  whole  series  of  functions,  therefore, 
which  cluster  about  the  use  of  language,  constitute  the 
most  important  of  all  the  agencies  of  personal  development ; 
not  indeed  because  of  any  intrinsic  peculiarity  of  them 
considered  as  personal  performances,  but  entirely  because 
in  them  the  social  Gcist,  the  socius,  comes  to  ever-clearer 
and  more  adequate  expression.1  In  the  instrumentalities 

1  In  the  general  position  of  the  paragraph  I  may  be  under  unconscious 
indebtedness  to  the  following  sentence  from  a  '  Syllabus  of  Lectures '  kindly 
sent  me  by  Professor  Royce:  "It  is  true  that  Thought  is  greatly,  although 
not  wholly,  dependent  on  Language;  but  this  is  due  not  to  any  peculiar  magi  • 
in  language,  but  rather  to  the  importance  of  the  latter  as  a  socially  Imitative 
Function." 


Play  139 

of  written  discourse,  the  social  conditions  of  the  past  are 
crystallized  and  made  available ;  and  in  them,  as  we  have 
had  occasion  to  see,  the  new  individual,  from  the  time  that 
he  is  born  into  the  world  of  independent  action,  finds  much 
of  his  social  heritage  directly  available. 

§2.    Play1 

91.  The  place  of  the  play-instinct  in  the  general  equip- 
ment of  the  young  of  animals  and  of  man  has  had  much 
discussion  recently  from  a  biological  or  phylogenetic  point 
of  view.2   Apart  from  questions  of  origin,  however,  we  may 
inquire  into  the  meaning  of  play  in  relation  to  the  social 
and  personal  development  of  the  individual  —  in  short,  its 
ontogenetic  value  —  in  the  somewhat  summary  way  which 
the  necessary  omission  of  details  requires. 

Among  the  more  important  functions  of  play,  in  the  edu- 
cation of  the  individual  for  his  life-work  in  a  network  of 
social  relationships,  the  following  may  be  indicated  with 
some  reference  to  their  natural  order. 

92.  I.  Play  is  a  most  important  form  of  organic  exercise. 
In  so  far  as  the  tendencies  involved  are  instinctive,  the  ex- 
ercise is  secured  to  the  individual  directly  in  the  channels 
set  by  heredity,  and  required  for  the  adult  activities  of  the 
species.     On  the  organic   side,  we  find  —  what   it  is  our 
main  object  to  show  also  for  the  mental  —  that  the  ac- 
tions into  which  the  young  of  animals  tend  normally  and 
spontaneously  to  indulge,  are  those  which  the  finished  ac- 

1  Since  this  section  was  written,  I  have  fallen  in  with  the  very  able  work, 
Die  Spiele  tier  Thiere,  by  Professor  K.  Groos.     His  theoretical  conclusion  as 
to  the  function  of  play,  from  the  biological  point  of  view,  is  the  same  as  that 
favoured  here. 

2  Cf.  Groos,  /of.  cit. 


140  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

tivities  later  brought  into  operation  are  to  require.  This 
is  an  important  indication  regarding  the  meaning  of  play 
from  an  historical  or  phylogenetic  point  of  view,  i.e.,  that 
the  play-instinct  as  such  has  arisen  to  afford  a  sort  of 
artificial  recapitulation  of  the  serious  and  strenuous  exer- 
tions of  race  progress,  and  thereby  to  subserve  the  need, 
that  the  individual  creature  has,  of  training  in  the  same 
exercises,  before  the  time  of  storm  and  stress  comes  upon 
him.1 

As  to  the  individual's  advantage  from  play,  it  is  shown 
so  plainly  in  the  illustrations  cited  from  the  life  of  young 
animals  by  other  authors,  that  I  need  not  stop  to  do  more 
than  recall  some  of  these  illustrations.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  young  dogs  play  at  biting,  chasing,  fighting, 
clawing,  etc.,  up  to  the  limits  of  safety.  This  is  inter- 
preted as  showing  that  the  play-instinct  had  its  race-origin 
in  the  actual  forms  of  struggle  and  competition  by  which 
the  species  has  maintained  and  developed  itself.  We  now 
see  that  these  play-activities  of  the  dog  are  also  of  direct 
value  to  him  as  a  schooling  in  the  life  of  self-support 
which  he  has  to  live  as  an  individual  dog.  Another  case 
—  the  play  of  a  kitten  with  a  mouse  after  catching  it  —  is 

1  See  the  abundant  examples  given  in  the  work  of  Groos  already  referred 
to :  I  have  discussed  Professor  Groos'  book  at  some  length  in  Sciente,  Febru- 
ary 26,  1897.  Two  other  indications  of  the  function  of  play  /'//  race  dn'thp- 
ment  may  be  suggested.  It  serves,  first,  as  an  index  of  the  organic  devel- 
opment already  secured  to  the  species;  it  reveals  something  of  the  amount 
and  direction  of  the  hereditary  impulse  before  it  is  actually  developed  in  the 
individual.  The  plays  of  animals  are  particular,  according  to  the  species; 
just  as  much  so  as  are  their  full-developed  instincts.  Second,  by  the  ex- 
ercise involved  in  play  the  animal  enlarges  the  scope,  strengthens  the  force, 
and  so  aids  the  further  development  of  the  hereditary  impulse  in  the  species 
in  the  direction  of  the  functions  thus  brought  into  play,  through  the  operation 
of  organic  selection  (the  preservation  of  the  better  adapted  or  accommodated 
individuals  under  natural  selection). 


Play  141 

a  still  more  striking  instance  of  the  schooling  of  the  young 
into  the  stock-in-trade  of  the  adult's  method  of  support 
and  of  defence,  when  in  a  wild  state.  And  so  on  through 
an  infinite  catalogue  of  instances. 

93.  II.  Play  is  a  most  important  method  of  realization 
of  the  social  instincts.  The  summary  consideration  of  the 
organic  utilities  of  play  prepares  us  for  the  part  which  the 
same  group  of  activities  play  on  the  side  of  the  conscious 
and  social  equipment  of  the  young.  Here  the  phenomena 
are  seen  in  very  marked  form  in  the  animal  world,  since 
in  the  brutes  the  phenomena  of  instinct  are  not  compli- 
cated with  those  of  the  higher  mental  faculties  to  the 
same  extent  as  in  man,  and  the  immediate  urgencies  are 
more  pressing.  So  I  may  first  speak  with  more  reference 
to  those  higher  animals  which  have  well-developed  social 
and  collective  methods  of  action. 

The  kind  of  social  preparation  which  the  young  of  ani- 
mals get  from  their  playful  activities  together  is  just  the 
experimental  verification  of  the  benefits  and  pleasures  of 
united  action.  The  maternal  and  filial  instincts  involve 
a  strain  of  play,  in  animals  no  less  than  in  the  human 
species.  Dogs  in  their  play  at  fighting  often  set  numbers 
against  swiftness  or  force,  and  exchange  parts  in  the  midst 
of  the  game,  the  chaser  being  chased,  etc.  Birds  in  the  same 
flock  will  unite  to  storm  a  tree  where  a  fancied  enemy  is 
perched,  just  as  they  combine  against  a  real  enemy  when  he 
has  the  tree  to  himself.  Ants  have  sham  battles  with  op- 
posing hosts  ;  thus  getting  the  effects  of  military  manoeuv- 
ring without  bloodshed.1  The  extended  '  make  believe '  of 
animals  —  for  example  in  pretending  to  bite  one  another, 
with  the  elaborate  responses  of  pretended  anger  and 

1  I  have  lost  my  authority  for  this  illustration  but  have  the  citation  noted. 


142  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

attack  —  shows  invaluable  practice  in  varying  and  under- 
standing quasi-social  relations  and  situations.  Mock  fight- 
ing, sometimes  very  elaborate,  is  widespread  in  nature : 
ducks  play  at  fighting  on  the  water,  birds  in  the  air,  animals 
injure  one  another  in  their  playful  zeal.1  The  remarkable 
phenomena  of  leadership  show  just  the  results  to  be  ex- 
pected from  game  exercises.  In  certain  packs  of  dogs,  in 
the  words  of  Hudson,  "from  the  foremost  in  strength  and 
power  down  to  the  weakest,  there  is  a  gradation  in  author- 
ity;  each  one  knows  just  how  far  he  can  go,  which  com- 
panion he  can  bully  when  he  is  in  a  bad  temper  .  .  .  and 
to  which  he  must  yield  in  his  turn."2  Cases  of  division  of 
responsibility  between  individuals  in  trapping  prey,  etc., 
are  recorded,  in  which  it  is  very  difficult  to  see  the  possi- 
bility of  the  united  action  becoming  fixed  as  an  instinct 
unless  the  repetition  of  the  situation  in  some  such  artificial 
way  as  the  play-instinct  would  seem  to  give  opportunity  for 
enabling  the  animals  to  learn  their  part ;  this  might  be  of 
enough  importance  to  shield  the  individuals  for  some  gen- 
erations against  natural  selection.8 

1  Cf.  Hudson,  The  Naturalist  in  La  Plata,  p.  308.     The  reader  may  con- 
sult Hudson's  extended  account  of  the  social  plays  of  birds  and  mammals  (loc. 
«'/.,  esp.  Chap.  XIX.  "Music  and  Dancing  in  Nature")  and  Groos'  Spiele,  p. 
202.     It  is  a  defect,  I  think,  of  Herr  Groos'  treatment  that  he  does  not  make 
adequate  recognition  of  the  social  function  among  the  utilities  of  play.     (Cf., 
however,  p.  71,  "dahcr  ist  die  sociale  Bedeutung  der  Spiele  ausserordentlich 
gross  ").     I  should  say  that  it  is  notably  in  view  of  the  social  life  of  the  higher 
orders  and  of  man  that  this  neat  sentence,  propounded  by  Groos  as  something 
of  a  paradox,  gets  much  of  its  truth  :   "  Die  Thiere  spielen  nicht  weil  sie  Jung 
sind,  sondern  sie  haben  einer  Jugend,  weil  sie  spielen  mussen  "  (lof.  ft/.,  p.  68). 

2  Lot.  fit.,  p.  337.     "  This  masterful  and  domineering  temper,  so  common 
among  social  animals,"  he  thinks  it  is  that  "leads  to  the  persecution  of  the 
weak  and  sickly." 

*  This  is  only  a  suggestion,  but  if  facts  should  warrant  it,  it  might  be  a  re- 
source in  some  of  the  discussions  of  congenital  endowment,  heredity,  etc.,  in 
which  the  origin  of  a  once-functioning  or  periodical  instinct  is  in  question. 


Play  143 

From  the  anthropological  point  of  view  also  the  instinct 
to  play  would  have  the  same  utility.  Primitive  man,  we 
are  told,  indulged  to  a  remarkable  extent  in  games,  dances, 
amusements  of  a  co-operative  character.  This  must  have 
been  a  constant  training  to  him  in  the  benefits  of  sociality 
and  a  constant  stimulus  to  the  pursuits  of  peace. 

94.  But  it  is   in    the  human  young  that   this  type  of 
utility    attaching    to    play-activities    comes    into    greatest 
prominence ;  and  here  it  is  a  matter  of  such  importance 
that  I  may  be  excused  for  going  into  some  detail  in  the 
following  points,  in  order  to  join  up  this  topic  with  the 
method  of   social    development   of   the  child   in    general. 
The  child  is  destined  to  a  life  of  personal  self-consciousness 
which  is  realized  in  all  its  richness  only  in  the  social  re- 
lationships into  which  he  is  reared  ;    and  the  indications 
that  in  his  games  he  has  one  of  his  most  important  means 
of  schooling  in  personal  development  should,  if  it  be  true, 
be   given   the   emphasis  which   both   its    theoretical   and 
practical  importance  would  seem  to  warrant. 

III.  Play  gives  flexibility  of  mind  and  body  with  self- 
control.  There  is  a  certain  plasticity  of  function  secured 
by  exercise  which  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  plasticity 
of  crude  unformed  movement.  To  do  things  quickly  and 
well  is  more  than  to  do  them  quickly  or  well.  Just  as  the 
grace  of  the  trained  horse  can  be  contrasted  with  the  awk- 
wardness of  the  colt,  so  the  ready  use  of  the  mental  facul- 
ties by  a  trained  scholar  may  be  contrasted  with  the  mental 
movements  of  the  rustic.  I  think  all  games,  from  the 
nursery  to  the  athletic  field,  have  this  virtue. 

95.  IV.    Play  gives  the  child  a  constant  opportunity  for 
imitative   learning   and  invention.     It  is   evident   to  any 
one  who  has  observed  children  at  play  that  the  instinct  to 


144  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

imitate  comes  strongly  out  in  many  ways  in  the  disposition 
of  the  players,  in  the  following  after  the  leaders,  in  the 
learning  of  successive  situations,  in  the  division  of  parts, 
in  the  novel  variations  and  improvements  which  are  intro- 
duced in  the  progress  of  the  several  games  performed. 

There  are  usually  in  each  group  of  children  some  of 
greater  inventive  faculty  than  the  rest ;  they  are  more 
restless  than  their  fellows,  fond  of  leading,  constantly 
proposing  novelties.  The  others,  on  the  contrary,  follow 
these  by  more  or  less  ready  imitation.  It  matters  little, 
of  course,  how  valuable  or  how  lacking  in  value  the  new 
elements  of  the  game  may  be.  The  fact  that  the  children 
imitate  it  and,  by  so  doing,  learn  how  to  realize  for  them- 
selves the  new  combinations  of  movement,  new  varieties 
of  social  relationship,  new  dispositions  of  persons  for  united 
co-operation  and  effort  —  this  is  enough  to  make  the  disci- 
pline of  the  game  a  matter  of  the  greatest  interest  and 
importance  in  the  origin  and  development  of  the  personal 
and  social  sense.  The  stimulus  to  imitation  is  thus  felt 
in  the  circle  of  the  child's  own  equals,  and  action  upon 
such  a  stimulus  is  most  unreserved  and  natural.  Besides, 
the  child  has  in  such  cases  only  relatively  simple  and  easy 
novelties  to  which  to  accommodate  himself  ;  and  he  is  not 
embarrassed  by  the  failure  to  understand  what  is  required 
of  him,  as  he  so  often  is  in  the  case  of  the  interpretations 
which  he  is  called  upon  to  make  of  the  actions  of  his 
elders. 

In  this  learning  by  imitation  during  his  games,  the  child 
is  exercising  himself  in  the  art  of  invention  as  well  as 
simply  gaining  new  insights  into  situations  of  social  value ; 
for  by  imitation,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  first  exhibi- 
tions of  originality  are  made  possible. 


Play  145 

96.  V.  But  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  social  aspect  of  in- 
vention is  also  well  realised  in  tJie  games  of  childJwod.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  we  found  the  child — and  the 
adult  as  well  —  constantly  bringing  his  thoughts,  interpre- 
tations, inventions,  to  the  social  tests  represented  by  the 
judgments  and  sentiments  which  his  creations  meet  with 
in  society  about  him.  Now  this  testing,  essential  to  his 
growth  as  it  is,  finds  a  field  of  exploitation  in  all  his 
games.  And  I  may  distinguish  again  two  ways  in  which 
this  advantage  is  secured  to  the  young  heroes  of  the  play. 

In  the  first  place  the  game  is  essentially  a  thing  of 
activity ;  it  calls  the  player  into  action.  He  must  make 
strenuous,  varied,  and  repeated  trial  and  effort.  The  end 
in  view,  the  winning  of  the  game  for  himself  or  for  his  'side,' 
involves  a  series  of  steps,  each  putting  him  to  the  test  in 
all  the  ways  of  action  which  the  particular  sport  involves. 
It  is  natural  to  suppose,  therefore,  that  as  such  a  game 
progresses  the  child  comes  to  understand  himself  better 
through  his  own  actions  and  their  limitations  than  he  did 
before.  He  finds  out  how  fast  he  can  run,  how  much  he 
can  lift,  how  dexterous  he  is  in  dodging,  how  skilful  in 
eluding  pursuit,  etc.  He  thus  comes  directly  to  a  larger 
and  more  adequate  sense  of  his  personal  and  social  fitness 
for  the  common  activities  which  the  game  represents,  and 
with  them  for  the  real  duties  and  undertakings  which  his 
actual  life  calls  upon  him  to  perform.  This  power  to 
estimate  self,  with  the  self-reliance  which  goes  with  it, 
constitutes  one  of  the  essential  constituents  of  sane  and 
healthy  social  character. 

At  the  same  time,  second,  the  same  revelation  of  the 
personal  quality  of  the  hero  who  thus  learns  to  understand 
himself,  is  made  regarding  him  to  each  of  his  playfellows. 


146  Social  Aid*  to   J 

They  also  learn  what  he  can  do  in  the  various  exercises  of 
mind  and  body,  ho\v  ingenious  he  is,  how  supple,  ho\v  in- 
ventive, how  swift,  how  strong.  And  the  progress  of  the 
game  depends,  or  comes  to  depend,  upon  the  preserving  of 
some  degree  of  balance  between  him  and  them.  He  is 
given  his  part  by  a  quick  judgment  of  what  he  can  do  or 
what  he  is  liable  to  choose  to  do.  He  must  be  combined 
against  if  he  be  strong,  supplemented  if  he  be  weak*,  in- 
structed if  he  be  dull,  circumvented  if  he  be  bright.  All 
this  then  reacts  upon  the  particular  boy  again  to  stimulate 
him  to  better  and  better  judged  effort  for  himself,  and  to 
more  concerted  effort  for  his  party. 

97.  The  outcome  of  it  all,  we  may  then  go  on  to  say, 
becomes,  or  tends  directly  to  become,  socially  important. 
A  premium  is  put  upon  united  action  just  by  the  fact  of 
united  knowledge.  To  exhibit  what  I  can  do  alone,  is  to 
exhibit  my  importance  as  an  ally.  The  sense  of  my  weak- 
ness in  myself  is  a  revelation  to  me  of  my  need  of  you  as 
my  ally.  The  presence  of  a  stronger  than  either  is  a 
direct  incitement  to  the  quick  alliance  between  you  and 
me  against  him.  And  the  victory  which  we  win  over  the 
stronger  by  the  alliance  is  both  a  confirmation  to  us  of  the 
utility  of  social  co-operation  and  a  convincing  proof  to  him 
that  society  is  stronger  than  the  individual.  The  spirit  of 
union,  the  sense  of  social  dependence  as  set  over  against 
the  spirit  of  private  intolerance,  the  habit  of  suspension  of 
private  utilities  for  the  larger  social  good,  the  willingness 
to  recognize  and  respond  to  the  leadership  of  the  more 
competent,  —  in  short,  all  that  constitutes  a  person  a  dif- 
ferent person,  a  new  self,  a  socius,  all  this  grows  grandly 
on  the  playground  of  every  school  where  the  natural 
instincts  of  the  scholars  arc  unmolested  by  ill-judged 


Art  147 

interference  and  artificial  restrictions.  Many  of  the  or- 
ganizations of  developed  society  are  exemplified  in  the 
spontaneous  play-organizations  of  large  schools  ;  and  it  is 
only  a  due  recognition  of  these  facts  to  say  that  because 
of  them  the  games  of  childhood  and  youth  are  an  engine  of 
great  social  value.1 

8  3.    Art 

O    *J 

98.  The  beginning  of  the  art-instinct  in  children  seems 
to  appear  in  the  occupations  which  serve  to  bring  out  the 
imagination  ;  and  by  imagination  in  this  connection  we 
mean  the  function  of  invention  understood  in  the  wide 
sense,  as  including  both  the  aspects  of  originality  now  set 
out  in  some  detail.2  For  the  beginning  of  a  career  which  is 
to  be  artistic  even  in  the  most  meagre  way,  the  child  must 
make  for  himself  new  combinations  of  the  copy-materials 
of  his  imitation.  This  is,  of  course,  the  first  requirement. 
But  it  is  evident  that  this  does  not,  when  taken  alone,  sat- 
isfy the  requirements  of  art-production.  Others  may  pro- 
nounce our  imaginative  productions  grotesque,  indeed  we 
may  do  so  ourselves.  It  is  this  appeal  to  others  and  to 
the  matured  opinion  of  his  own  better  and  second  self  that 
constitutes  a  claim  on  the  artist's  part  to  the  appreciation 
which  serves  to  bring  the  work  of  his  invention  into  the 
area  of  art. 

I  do  not  intend  in  this  connection  to  propose  even  the 

1  If  all  these  utilities,  as  well  as  direct  organic  utility,  are  subserved  by  play, 
we  seem  justified  in  considering  it  a  true  instinct,  and  in  discarding  entirely 
the  view  which  confines  it  to  the  using  up  of  'surplus  energy.'     On  this  also 
see  Herr  Groos'  book,  Die  Spiele  der  Thiere,  Chap.  I. 

2  That   is,  so-called  '  constructive   imagination,'  by  which  invention   pro- 
ceeds;   not  passive    imagination,  often  called  'fancy.'     Groos  fails  to  make 
this  distinction,  both  in  his  interpretation  of  art  and  in  his  criticism  of  others 
(as  of  the  present  writer,  loc.  ci(.,  p.  307). 


148  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

rudiments  of  a  theory  of  art ;  but  it  is  a  common  element 
in  many  theories  of  art  that  they  require  more  than  the 
subjective  putting  of  materials  together  and  the  making 
of  new  shapes,  if  the  producer  is  to  be  an  artist  and  his 
work  artistic.  This  second  something  we  must  look  for, 
therefore,  in  the  judgments  of  others  than  the  individual, 
even  though  the  individual  may  come  by  education  or  by 
heredity  to  have  the  criteria  of  such  judgment  all  within 
himself.  In  other  words,  the  judgment  in  which  art-appre- 
ciation rests  is  a  social  judgment,  whether  the  individual 
be  able  to  rise  to  it  or  not.  And  the  fact  that  an  artist 
gets  the  praise  of  mankind  for  his  work  is  just  the  evidence 
that  here  is  a  man  who,  in  his  private  sense  of  values,  does 
in  some  adequate  way  realize  the  social  judgment.  His 
work  pleases  mankind. 

If  this  be  true,  —  and  its  truth  becomes  more  evident 
from  the  synthesis  it  enables  us  to  make  of  certain  current 
doctrines  in  aesthetic  theory, — we  find  that  art,  like  lan- 
guage and  play,  becomes  capable  of  interpretation  through 
its  connection  with  the  social  consciousness.  The  per- 
sonal element  in  art,  the  mere  creation,  in  the  imagination, 
of  new  but  private  combinations,  is  invention  in  its  early 
imitative  aspect ;  the  appeal  then  made  to  a  wider  social 
judgment  for  the  sanction  of  the  beauty  of  the  construc- 
tion, illustrates  the  second  aspect  of  invention  which  we 
have  now  found  present  in  so  many  activities  of  both  child 
and  adult :  '  social  invention '  I  have  called  it.  Let  us 
see  how  the  child  gets  the  rudiments  of  art  started  in  him 
on  this  basis. 

99.  It  is  clear,  when  we  think  of  it,  that  the  only  way 
that  the  child  has  of  getting  the  appreciation  of  others  is 
through  action.  We  have  seen  how  this  works  in  his 


Art  149 

games.  The  general  way,  therefore,  of  getting  the  kind 
of  social  judgment  which  artistic  appreciation  renders, 
must  also  be  through  action ;  and  the  child  must  exhibit 
himself  on  all  occasions,  if  he  would  turn  his  imitative 
imaginations  into  things  of  social  worth.  Upon  these 
acts,  whereby  he  more  or  less  explicitly  exhibits  himself, 
and  upon  the  social  recognition  of  the  inventive  thoughts 
which  inspire  them,  the  beginning  of  all  art-interests  in 
the  community  must  have  originally  rested,  and  must  rest 
in  the  child  in  so  far  as  he  is  left  to  his  own  devices.  So 
we  should  expect  to  find  children  very  fond  of  exhibiting 
themselves,  of  '  showing  off '  as  the  saying  is  —  a  phrase 
which,  in  its  ordinary  usage,  may  be  taken  to  give  some 
evidence  at  least  of  the  reality  of  the  phenomenon  itself. 

The  point  thus  established  may  be  made  evident  to  an 
observer  of  children  not  only  in  their  games,  but  in  all  the 
affairs  of  their  life.  No  invention  pleases  them,  as  we 
have  seen,  until  it  is  socially  confirmed  by  mother  or  sister. 
No  attainment  —  drawing,  new  speech-combination,  hand- 
manipulation,  or  what-not  of  youthful  pride  —  is  of  much 
value,  or  held  in  high  esteem,  until  father  has  seen  that 
his  boy  can  do  it  and  do  it  by  himself.  His  sense  of 
agency  and  originality  seems  to  feed  and  grow  fat  upon 
just  the  sort  of  recognition  which  comes  through  his 
exhibition  of  himself  in  his  social  circle.  His  judgments 
are  directly  modified  and  controlled  by  the  social  effects 
which  his  attainments  call  out.  The  exhibition  of  his  new 
drawing  in  the  home  circle  is  as  much  to  his  budding 
genius  as  is  the  exhibition  which  the  artist  makes  in  the 
Salon  or  at  the  World's  Fair ;  and,  I  take  it,  his  develop- 
ment is  dependent  upon  it  in  very  much  the  same  sense, 
and  to  a  greater  degree. 


150  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

100.  Originality  in  art,  therefore,  as  is  originality  every- 
where else,  is  an  affair  both  of  individual  endowment  and 
thought  and  of  social  recognition  and  confirmation.      It 
is  not  that  the  art-impulse  is  exhausted  in  self-exhibition; 
that  is  to  take  the  later  aspect  for  the  whole,  to  confine 
ourselves  to  the  social  point  of  view,  and  to  make  genius 
out  of  vanity.     But  it  is  to  say  —  and  this  is  my  essential 
point  —  that  the  social  judgment,  which  a  work  of  art  has 
to  sustain,  finds  its  correlative  impulse  in  the  self-exhibition 
of  the  producer.     Only  thus  can  his  own  judgment   be 
instructed.     The  reaction  of  this  social  recognition  upon 
the  producer  is  not  alone  the  fountain  of  his  stimulus  and 
the  test  of  his  success ;  it  is  also  the  very  source  of  his 
sense  of  values. 

For  the  growth  of  the  self-thought  it  is  which  gives 
the  judgment  of  values,  and  that  growth  is  by  these  two 
essential  movements.  This  is  carried  out  in  detail  in  the 
consideration  of  sentiment  (Chap.  VIII.),  where  we  find 
that  a  full  ethical  or  aesthetic  judgment  cannot  be  con- 
stituted as  long  as  the  thinker  resolutely  excludes  the 
sense  of  the  knowledge  or  judgment  of  others. 

101.  If  it  were  my  purpose  in  this  connection  to  attempt 
a  general  survey  of  the  arts  from  this  point  of  view,  certain 
evident  sources  might  be  cited  from  which  confirmation 
could  be  drawn.     We  might  say  that  song  (with  the  dance) 
is  the  first  attempt  at  art,  and  both  from  an  archaeological 
point  of  view  and  from  an  infantile  point  of  view,  it  is  one 
of  the  first  instruments  of  personal  show  and  the  attempt 
at   social   effect.      The    serenade    of    Hamlet    commends 
Hamlet ;  the  evening  circle  draws  closely  about  the  indi- 
vidual who  entertains  the  company  with  song.     The  birds 
make  love  with  notes,  and  the  notes  seem  to  express  the 


Art  151 

excellence  of  the  emotions  by  which  they  are  inspired. 
In  short,  the  idea  of  commending  self  to  mate,  companion, 
friend,  seems  to  attach  to  song  as  a  remnant  of  the  utility 
which  must  have  been  great  in  the  animal  world,  and  to 
point  to  the  time  when  song  was  the  only  art,  and  when 
the  only  function  of  art  was  that  of  attracting  attention. 

In  music  generally,  the  plastic  arts,  and  painting,  the 
self-exhibiting  impulse  is  more  difficult  to  detect ;  but  the 
outcome  of  it,  the  appeal  to  social  recognition  which  they 
all  make,  is  what  remains  of  it.  This  is  what  I  desire  to 
leave  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  as  my  immediate  thought 
on  the  subject ;  the  actual  ground  on  which  the  art- 
impulse  is  identified,  in  so  far,  with  the  self-exhibiting 
impulse  has  been  well  indicated  by  another.1 

1 02.  It  may  be  well  to  point  out,  in  including  the  con- 
sideration of  art  as  an  aid  to  social  development,  that  the 
view  now  given  serves  to  free  the  theory  of  Spencer  from 
its  most  embarrassing  criticism.  Spencer  has  long  held 
that  the  origin  of  art  is  to  be  found  in  the  play-instinct. 
But  he  fails  to  see  the  utility  of  the  play-instinct,  and  so 
opens  himself  to  the  criticism  that  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
genesis  of  art  he  deserts  the  evolution  hypothesis  alto- 


1  Marshall,  Pain,  Pleasure,  and  Esthetics.  As  to  the  general  genetic  theory 
of  art,  that  is  not  in  place  here  ;  hut  I  may  take  occasion  to  suggest  that  the 
antithesis  between  decorative  and  imitative  art  may  find  its  ground  in  the 
two  psychological  principles  of  self-exhibition  and  imitation  by  which  personal 
invention  proceeds.  By  imitation,  the  new  interpretations  are  secured;  this  is 
the  principle  of  the  imitative  arts,  which  spring  from  this  need  of  man  to  reach 
new  results  by  the  imitative  handling  of  materials.  Then  by  expression,  in  the 
form  of  self-exhibition,  decoration,  social  display,  the  second  need  is  realized; 
so  there  arises  the  other  great  class  of  artistic  products,  the  decorative  and 
ornamental,  coming  out  earliest  in  the  painting  of  the  person,  the  decking  out 
of  the  body  with  bright  feathers,  etc.,  on  the  part  of  rude  peoples.  As  culture 
advances,  these  two  great  motives  are  united  in  the  fine  arts. 


152  Social  Aids  to  Invention 

gether.  If  play  be  merely  a  surplus  activity,  as  he  seems 
to  hold,  then  the  outcome,  embodied  in  the  art-impulse, 
is  a  by-product  merely,  and  is  to  be  considered  without 
utility  from  first  to  last.  The  theory,  on  the  other  hand, 
which  identifies  the  art-impulse  with  the  self-exhibiting 
instinct,  is  consistently  evolutionary  ;  but  it  has  failed  to 
find,  in  my  view,  that  the  self-exhibiting  instincts  have 
either  the  important  function  or  the  degree  of  exercise 
which  the  derivation  of  the  art-impulse  from  them  would 
demand.  They  have  been  connected  mainly  with  sex. 
The  present  view  seems  to  avoid  these  criticisms,  I  think. 
It  makes  the  essential  element  of  art-production  the  syn- 
thetic or  creative  imagination  working  by  imitation.  The 
social  control  and  limitation  necessary  to  the  value  of  these 
creations  are  secured  by  the  self-exhibiting  impulse  ;  and 
finally  the  self-exhibiting  impulses  find  their  field  of  exer- 
cise notably  in  the  playful  tendencies. 

Art-production  falls,  therefore,  under  the  general  function 
of  'selective  thinking'  in  which  the  same  two  phases  and 
the  same  utility  have  been  discovered.1 

Both  the  selective  criteria,  however  —  that  of  social 
confirmation,  as  well  as  that  of  imitative  construction  — 

1  Above,  Chap.  III.,  §  3.  It  may  have  been  noticed  by  the  reader  that  this 
social  determination  of  the  selective  principle  in  the  case  of  the  aesthetic  judg- 
ment is  an  application  of  the  general  determination  of  the  same  principle  above 
under  the  larger  head  of  selective  thinking.  We  will  find  another  such  case 
in  the  similar  treatment  of  the  ethical  judgment.  All  the  special  instances  in 
which  selections  are  made,  with  the  mental  attitude  of  belief  or  judgment  or 
sense  of  '  sufficiency,'  should  illustrate  the  criterion  found  above  to  be  general. 
The  further  question  as  to  the  differentiation  of  the  respective  domains,  as 
for  example  between  the  aesthetic  and  the  ethical,  concerns  the  objective 
qualities  or  '  coefficients '  in  accordance  with  which  the  matter  of  experience 
serves  in  this  case  or  that  to  arouse  this  general  attitude.  That  we  cannot 
discuss  here  ;  but  the  reader  may  turn  to  the  remarks  made  on  the  same  dis- 
tinction in  the  earlier  connection  (Sect.  55,  2). 


Art  153 

forbid  our  identifying  art  creations  with  the  products  of 
play,  and  finding  the  essential  feature  of  the  aesthetic 
consciousness  in  the  '  make-believe ' 1  or  Schein  which  dis- 
tinguishes play  from  strenuous  activity  (v.  Hartmann, 
Groos).  The  element  of  truth  in  that  theory  seems  to  be 
that  in  '  make-believe '  —  which  is  at  its  best  in  play  — 
the  sense  of  personal  freedom  and  creation  is  strong :  the 
sense  of  exaggerated  self  which  we  have  found  in  all  in- 
vention. But  the  need  of  selective  criteria  in  judging 
these  creations  appears  in  both  the  contrasted  facts  that 
(i)  the  veriest  'make-believe,'  seen  in  fancy  and  play,  is 
oftener  grotesque  than  beautiful,  and  (2)  that  the  arrange- 
ments of  nature,  which  have  in  our  perception  no  elements 
of  '  make-believe,'  are  beautiful  as  often  as  grotesque. 

1  A  phrase  used  by  Stout  {Anal.  Psych.  II.,  p.  262) ;    its  happy  social 
reference  is  at  once  evident. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  GENius1 

§  i.    The  Genius  of  Variation 

WITH  the  outcome  of  the  preceding  chapter  in  mind, 
the  problem  of  the  genius  becomes  somewhat  easier.  The 
first  requirement  is  that  we  state  the  social  man  in  the 
fewest  terms,  in  order  that  we  may  then  estimate  the 
genius  with  reference  to  the  sane  social  man.  What  he 
is,  we  have  seen.  He  is  a  person  who  learns  to  judge  by 
the  judgments  of  society.  What,  then,  shall  we  say  of  the 
genius  from  this  point  of  view  ?  Can  the  hero-worshipper 
be  right  in  saying  that  the  genius  teaches  society  to  judge  ; 
or  shall  we  say  that  the  genius,  like  other  men,  must  learn 
to  judge  by  the  judgments  of  society  ? 

103.  The  most  fruitful  point  of  view,  no  doubt,  is  that 
which  considers  the  genius  a  variation.2  And  unless  we  do 
this,  it  is  evidently  impossible  to  get  any  theory  which  will 
bring  him  into  our  general  scheme.  But  how  great  a  vari- 
ation ?  and  in  what  direction?  —  these  are  the  questions. 
The  great  variations  found  in  the  criminal-by-heredity, 
the  insane,  the  idiotic,  etc.,  we  have  found  excluded  from 
society ;  so  we  may  well  ask  why  the  genius  is  not  ex- 

1  Cf.  Popular  Science  Monthly,  August,  1896. 

-  See  the  notable  treatment  of  the  genius  from  this  point  of  view  in  James' 
Will  to  Belifi'e,  pp.  216  ft".,  which  first  appeared  as  an  article  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  October,  1880. 

'54 


The  Genius  of  Variation  155 

eluded  also.  If  our  determination  is  correct  of  the  limits 
within  which  society  decides  who  is  not  to  be  excluded, 
then  the  genius  must  come  within  these  limits.  He 
cannot  escape  them  and  live  socially. 

The  directions  in  which  the  genius  actually  varies 
from  the  average  man  are  evident,  as  matters  of  fact. 
He  is,  first  of  all,  a  man  of  great  power  of  thought,  of 
great  constructive  imagination,  speaking  as  psychologist. 
So  let  us  believe,  first,  that  a  genius  is  a  man  who  has, 
occasionally,  greater  thoughts  than  other  men  have.  Is 
that  a  reason  for  excluding  him  from  society  ?  Certainly 
not ;  for  by  great  thoughts  we  mean  true  thoughts, 
—  thoughts  which  will  work,  thoughts  which  bring  in  new 
eras  in  the  discovery  of  principles,  or  in  their  application. 
This  is  just  what  all  development  depends  upon,  this  at- 
tainment of  novelty,  which  is  yet  consistent  with  olde-r 
knowledge  and  supplementary  to  it.  But  suppose  a  man 
have  thoughts  which  are  not  true,  which  are  not  '  fit '  for 
the  topic  of  their  application,  which  contradict  established 
knowledges,  or  which  result  in  bizarre  and  fanciful  combi- 
nations of  them  ;  to  that  man  we  generally  deny  the  name 
'genius.'  He  is  a  visionary,  a  'crank,'  an  agitator,  or  what- 
not. The  test,  then,  which  we  bring  to  bear  on  the  intel- 
lectual variations  shown  by  different  men,  is  that  of  truth, 
practical  workability  —  in  short,  to  sum  it  up,  'fitness.' 
Any  thought,  to  live  and  germinate,  must  be  a  socially  fit 
thought.  And  the  community's  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
the  thought  is  their  rule  of  judgment. 

Now  the  way  the  community  got  this  sense — that  is 
the  result  we  have  reached  above.  The  sense  of  fitness 
is  just  what  we  called  above  their  judgment.  So  far  at 
least  as  it  relates  to  matters  of  social  import,  it  is  of  social 


156  The  Genius 

origin.  It  reflects  the  outcome  of  all  social  heredity, 
tradition,  education.  The  sense  of  social  truth  is  their 
criterion  of  social  thoughts,  and  unless  the  reformer's 
thought  be  in  some  way  fit  to  go  into  the  setting  thus 
made  by  earlier  social  development,  —  whether,  indeed, 
the  people  of  his  generation  see  it  or  not,  —  he  is  not  a 
genius,  but  a  'sport.' 

104.  I  may  best  show  the  meaning  of  the  claim  that 
society  makes  upon  the  genius  by  asking  in  how  far  in 
actual  life  he  manages  to  escape  this  account  of  himself 
to  society.  The  facts  are  very  plain,  and  this  is  the 
class  of  facts  which  writers  like  Mr.  Spencer  urge,  as 
supplying  an  adequate  rule  for  the  application  of  the 
principles  of  their  social  philosophy.  The  simple  fact  is, 
say  they,  that  without  the  consent  of  society,  the  thoughts 
of  your  hero,  whether  he  be  genius  or  fool,  are  practically 
valueless.  The  fulness  of  time  must  come ;  and  the 
genius  before  his  time,  if  judged  by  his  works,  cannot  be 
a  genius  at  all.  His  thought  may  be  great,  so  great  that, 
centuries  after,  society  may  attain  to  it  as  its  richest  out- 
come and  its  profoundest  intuition  ;  but  before  that  time, 
it  is  as  bizarre  as  a  madman's  fancies  and  as  useless. 
What  would  be  thought,  we  might  be  asked  by  writers 
of  this  school,  of  a  rat  which  developed  upon  its  side  the 
hand  of  a  man,  with  all  its  mechanism  of  bone,  muscle, 
tactile  sensibility,  and  power  of  delicate  manipulation,  if 
the  remainder  of  the  creature  were  true  to  the  pattern 
of  a  rat?  Would  not  the  rest  of  the  rat  tribe  be  justified 
in  leaving  this  anomaly  behind  to  starve  in  the  hole 
where  his  singular  appendage  held  him  fast  ?  Is  such 
a  rat  any  the  less  a  monster  because  man  finds  use  for 
his  hands  ? 


The  Genius  of  Variation  157 

To  a  certain  extent  this  argument  is  forcible  and  true. 
If  social  utility  be  our  rule  of  definition,  then  certainly 
the  premature  genius  is  no  genius.  And  this  rule  of  defi- 
nition may  be  put  in  another  way  which  renders  it  still 
more  plausible.  The  variations  which  occur  in  intellect- 
ual endowment,  in  a  community,  vary  about  a  mean ; 
there  is,  theoretically,  an  average  man.  And  the  differ- 
ences among  men  which  can  be  taken  account  of  in  any 
philosophy  of  life  must  be  in  some  way  referable  to  this 
mean.  Variations  which  do  not  find  their  niche  at  all 
in  the  social  environment,  but  which  strike  all  the  social 
fellows  with  disapproval,  getting  no  sympathy  whatever, 
are  thereby  exposed  to  the  charge  of  being  '  sports '  of 
nature  and  the  fruit  of  chance.  The  lack  of  hearing 
which  awaits  such  a  man  sets  him  in  a  form  of  isolation, 
and  stamps  him  not  only  as  the  social  crank,  but  also  as 
the  cosmic  tramp. 

Put  in  its  positive  and  usual  form,  this  view  simply 
claims  that  man  is  always  the  outcome  of  the  social  move- 
ment. The  reception  he  gets  is  a  measure  of  the  degree 
in  which  he  adequately  represents  this  movement.  Cer- 
tain variations  are  possible  —  men  who  are  forward  in  the 
legitimate  progress  of  society  —  and  these  men  are  the 
true  and  only  geniuses.  Other  variations,  which  seem  to 
discount  the  future  too  much,  are  '  sports ' ;  for  the  only 
permanent  discounting  of  the  future  is  that  which  is  pro- 
jected from  the  elevation  of  the  past. 

105.  The  great  defect  of  this  view  is  found  in  its  defini- 
tions. We  exclaim  at  once :  who  made  the  past  the  meas- 
ure of  the  future  ?  and  who  made  social  approval  the 
measure  of  truth  ?  What  is  there  to  eclipse  the  vision 
of  the  poet,  the  inventor,  the  seer,  that  he  should  not 


158  The  Genius 

see  over  the  heads  of  his  generation,  and  raise  his  voice 
for  that  which,  to  all  men  else,  lies  behind  the  veil  ?  The 
social  philosophy  of  the  school  of  Spencer  cannot  answer 
these  questions,  I  think ;  nor  can  it  meet  the  appeal  we 
all  make  to  history  when  we  cite  the  names  of  Aristotle, 
Pascal,  and  Newton,  or  of  any  of  the  men  who  single-handed 
and  alone  have  set  guide-posts  to  history,  and  given  to 
the  world  large  portions  of  its  heritage  of  truth.  What 
can  set  limit  to  the  possible  variations  of  fruitful  intel- 
lectual power  ?  Rare  such  variations  —  that  is  their  law  : 
the  greater  the  variation,  the  more  rare !  But  so  is 
genius  :  the  greater,  the  more  rare.  And  as  to  the  rat 
with  the  human  hand,  he  would  not  be  left  to  starve  and 
decay  in  his  hole ;  he  would  be  put  in  alcohol  when  he 
died,  and  kept  in  a  museum  !  And  the  lesson  which  he 
would  teach  to  the  wise  biologist  would  be  that  here,  in 
this  rat,  nature  had  shown  her  genius  by  discounting  in 
advance  the  slow  processes  of  evolution  ! 

It  is,  indeed,  the  force  of  such  considerations  as  these 
which  have  led  to  many  justifications  of  the  position  that 
the  genius  is  quite  out  of  connection  with  the  social  move- 
ment of  his  time.  The  genius  brings  his  variations  to 
society  whether  society  will  or  no ;  and  as  to  harmony 
between  them,  that  is  a  matter  of  outcome  rather  than  of 
expectation  or  theory.  So  the  view  held  by  William 
James,  for  instance,  —  to  which  we  have  already  referred, 
—  that  the  causes  that  enter  into  the  production  of  varia- 
tions in  the  heredity  of  the  individual  are  altogether  physi- 
ological, and  so  represent  a  complete  '  cycle '  apart  from 
the  other  '  cycle '  of  causes  found  in  the  social  environment 
of  the  individual. 

While  not  agreeing  with  the  doctrine  which  makes  the 


The  Judgment  of  the  Genius  159 

genius  independent  of  the  social  movement,  —  least  of  all 
with  the  doctrine  that  physical  heredity  is  uninfluenced  by 
social  conditions,  —  the  hero-worshipper  seems  to  be  right 
in  saying  that  we  cannot  set  the  limitations  of  the  genius  on 
the  side  of  variations  in  intellectual  endowment.  So  if  the 
general  position  be  true  that  he  is  a  variation  of  some 
kind,  we  must  look  elsewhere  for'  the  direction  of  those 
peculiar  traits  whose  excess  would  be  his  condemnation. 
This  we  can  only  find  in  connection  with  the  other  de- 
mand that  we  make  of  the  ordinary  man  —  the  demand 
that  he  be  a  man  of  good  judgment.  And  to  this  we  may 
now  turn. 

§  2.    The  Judgment  of  the  Genius 

106.  We  should  bear  in  mind,  in  approaching  this  topic, 
the  result  which  follows  from  the  reciprocal  character  of 
social  relationships.  No  genius  ever  escapes  the  require- 
ments laid  down  for  his  learning,  his  social  heredity. 
Mentally  he  is  a  social  outcome,  as  well  as  are  the  fellows 
who  sit  in  judgment  on  him.  He,  therefore,  must  judge  his 
own  thoughts  as  they  do.  And  his  own  proper  estimate 
of  things  and  thoughts,  his  relative  sense  of  fitness,  gets 
application,  by  a  direct  law  of  his  own  mental  processes, 
to  himself  and  to  his  own  creations.  The  limitations 
which,  in  the  judgment  of  society,  his  variations  must  not 
overstep,  are  set  by  his  own  judgment  also.  If  the  man  in 
question  have  thoughts  which  are  socially  true,  he  will, 
ipso  facto,  know  that  they  are  true.  So  we  reach  a  conclu- 
sion regarding  the  selection  of  the  particular  thoughts  which 
the  genius  may  have  :  he  and  society  must  agree  in  regard 
to  the  fitness  of  them,  although  in  particular  cases  this 
agreement  ceases  to  be  the  emphatic  thing.  The  essen- 


160  The  Genius 

tial  thing  comes  to  be  the  reflection  of  the  social  standard 
in  the  thinker's  own  judgment ;  the  thoughts  thought  must 
always  be  critical/}1  judged  by  the  thinker  himself;  and  for 
the  most  fart,  and  genetically  considered,  his  judgment  is  at 
once  also  the  social  judgment.1  This  may  be  illustrated 
further. 

107.  Suppose  we  take  the  man  of  striking  thoughts 
and  withal  no  sense  of  fitness — none  of  the  judgment 
about  them  which  society  has.  He  will  go  through  a 
mighty  host  of  discoveries  every  hour.  The  very  eccen- 
tricity of  his  imaginations  will  only  appeal  to  him  for  the 
greater  admiration.  He  will  bring  his  most  chimerical 
schemes  out  and  air  them  with  the  same  assurance  with 
which  the  real  inventor  exhibits  his.  But  such  a  man  is 
not  pronounced  a  genius.  If  his  ravings  about  this  and 
that  are  harmless,  we  smile  and  let  him  talk  ;  but  if  his 
lack  of  judgment  extend  to  things  of  grave  import,  or  be 
accompanied  by  equal  illusions  regarding  himself  and 
society  in  other  relationships,  then  we  classify  his  case 
and  put  him  into  the  proper  ward  for  the  insane.  Two 
of  the  commonest  forms  of  such  impairment  of  judgment 
are  seen  in  the  victims  of  '  fixed  ideas  '  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  exalt^s  on  the  other.  These  men  have  no  true 
sense  of  values,  no  way  of  selecting  the  fit  combinations  of 
imagination  from  the  unfit ;  and  even  though  some  trans- 
cendently  true  and  original  thought  were  to  flit  through 
the  diseased  mind  of  such  a  one,  it  would  go  as  it  came, 
and  the  world  would  wait  for  a  man  with  a  sense  of  fitness 
to  arise  and  rediscover  it.  Men  of  such  perversions  of 

1  This  is  another  way  of  saying  what  was  said  above  (Chap.  III.,  §  3)  that 
the  individual's  private  'selective  thinking'  proceeds  under  the  social  tests  in- 
volved in  bis  personal  growth. 


The  Judgment  of  the  Genius  161 

judgment  are  common  among  us.  We  all  know  the  man 
who  seems  to  be  full  of  rich  and  varied  thought,  who  holds 
us  sometimes  by  the  power  of  his  conceptions  or  the 
beauty  of  his  creations ;  but  in  whose  thought  we  yet  find 
some  incongruity,  some  eminently  unfit  element,  some 
grotesque  application,  some  elevation  or  depression  from 
the  level  of  commonplace  truth,  some  ugly  strain  in  the 
aesthetic  impression.  The  man  himself  does  not  know  it, 
and  that  is  the  reason  that  he  includes  it.  His  sense  of 
fitness  is  dwarfed  or  paralyzed.  We  in  the  community 
come  to  regret  that  he  is  so  '  visionary,'  with  all  his  talent ; 
and  so  we  accommodate  ourselves  to  his  unfruitfulness,  and 
at  the  best  only  expect  an  occasional  hour's  entertainment 
under  the  spell  of  his  presence.  This  certainly  is  not  the 
man  to  produce  a  world  movement. 

Most  of  the  men  we  call  'cranks'  are  of  this  type. 
They  are  essentially  lacking  in  judgment,  and  the  popular 
estimate  of  them  is  exactly  right. 

1 08.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  from  this  last  explanation, 
that  there  is  a  second  direction  of  variation  among  men  : 
variation  in  their  sense  of  the  truth  and  value  of  their  own 
thoughts,  and  with  them  of  the  thoughts  of  others.  This  is 
the  great  limitation  which  the  man  of  genius  shares  with 
men  generally  —  a  limitation  in  the  amount  of  variation 
which  he  may  show  in  his  social  judgments,  especially  as 
these  variations  affect  the  claim  which  he  makes  upon 
society  for  recognition.  It  is  evident  that  this  must  be  an 
important  factor  in  our  estimate  of  the  claims  of  the  hero 
to  our  worship,  especially  since  it  is  the  more  obscure  side 
of  his  temperament  —  the  side  generally  overlooked  alto- 
gether. This  we  call  in  our  further  illustrations  the 
'  social  sanity '  of  the  man  of  genius. 


1 62  The  Genius 

One  of  the  evident  indications  of  the  kind  of  social 
variation  in  question  may  be  seen  in  the  varying  effects 
which  education  has  upon  character.  The  discipline  of 
social  development  is  mainly  conducive,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  the  reduction  of  eccentricities,  to  the  levelling  off  of 
personal  peculiarities.  All  who  come  into  the  social  heri- 
tage learn  the  same  great  series  of  lessons  derived  from 
the  past,  and  all  get,  in  the  formative  years  of  their  educa- 
tion from  the  common  exercises  of  the  home  and  school, 
the  sort  of  judgment  required  in  social  life.  So  we  should 
expect  that  the  greater  singularities  of  disposition,  which 
represent  insuperable  difficulties  in  the  process  of  social 
assimilation,  would  show  themselves  early.  Here  it  is 
that  the  conflict  actually  conies  —  a  struggle  between  im- 
pulse and  social  restraint.  Many  a  genius  owes  the  re- 
demption of  his  intellectual  gifts  to  legitimate  social  uses, 
to  the  victory  gained  by  a  teacher  and  the  discipline 
learned  through  obedience.  And  thus  it  is,  also,  that  so 
many  who  in  early  life  give  promise  of  great  distinction 
fail  to  achieve  it.  They  run  off  after  a  phantom,  and 
society  pronounces  them  mad.  In  their  case  the  personal 
factor  has  overcome  the  social  factor.  They  have  failed 
in  the  lessons  they  should  have  learned,  their  own  self- 
criticism  is  undisciplined,  and  they  miss  the  mark. 

109.  These  extremes,  however,  do  not  exhaust  the 
case.  In  one  of  them  we  see  the  tendency  of  social  life 
to  obscure  the  light  of  genius ;  in  the  other  the  ten- 
dency of  the  potential  genius  to  work  himself  out  a  crank, 
through  his  rejection  of  social  restraint.  The  average 
man  is  the  mean.  But  the  greatest  reach  of  human 
attainment,  and  with  it  the  greatest  influence  ever  exerted 
by  man,  is  yet  more  than  either  of  these.  It  is  not 


The  Judgment  of  the  Genius  163 

enough,  the  hero-worshipper  may  still  say,  that  the  genius 
should  have  sane  and  healthy  judgment,  as  society  reckons 
sanity.  The  fact  still  remains  that  even  in  his  social  judg- 
ments he  may  instruct  society.  He  may  stand  alone,  and, 
by  sheer  might,  lift  his  fellow-men  up  to  his  point  of  van- 
tage, to  their  eternal  gain  and  to  his  eternal  praise.  Even 
let  it  be  that  he  must  have  self-criticism,  the  sense  of  fit- 
ness of  which  you  speak,  that  very  sense  may  transcend 
the  vulgar  judgment  of  his  fellows.  His  judgment  may 
be  saner  than  theirs  ;  and  as  his  intellectual  creations  are 
great  and  singular,  so  may  his  sense  of  their  truth  be  full 
and  unique.  To  be  sure,  this  divine  assurance  of  the  man 
of  genius  may  be  counterfeited ;  the  vulgar  dreamer  may 
have  it,  but  nevertheless,  when  a  genius  has  it,  he  is  not 
a  vulgar  dreamer. 

This  is  true,  I  think,  and  the  explanation  of  it  leads  to 
the  last  fruitful  application  of  the  doctrine  of  variations. 
Just  as  the  intellectual  endowment  of  men  may  vary  within 
very  wide  limits,  so  may  also  the  social  qualifications  of  men. 
There  are  men  who  find  it  their  meat  to  do  society  ser- 
vice. There  are  men  so  naturally  born  to  take  the  lead 
in  social  reform,  in  executive  matters,  in  organization,  in 
planning  our  social  campaigns,  that  we  turn  to  them  as  by 
instinct.  They  have  a  sort  of  insight  to  which  we  can 
only  bow.  They  gain  the  confidence  of  men,  win  the  sup- 
port of  women,  and  excite  the  acclamations  of  children. 
These  people  are  social  geniuses.  They  seem  to  antici- 
pate the  discipline  of  social  education.  They  do  not  need 
to  learn  the  lessons  of  the  social  environment.  They  dis- 
count the  social  future  as  men  with  great  intellectual  gifts 
may  discount  the  future  of  knowledge  and  invention. 

Such  persons  represent,  I  think,  a  variation  toward  sug- 


164  The  Genius 

gestibility  of  the  most  delicate  and  singular  kind.  They 
surpass  the  teachers  from  whom  they  learn.  It  is  hard  to 
say  that  they  '  learn  to  judge  by  the  judgments  of  society.' 
They  so  judge  without  seeming  to  learn,  yet  they  differ 
from  the  man  whose  eccentricities  forbid  him  to  learn 
through  the  discipline  of  society.  The  two 'are  opposite 
extremes  of  variation  ;  that  seems  to  me  the  only  possible 
construction  of  them.  It  is  the  difference  between  the 
ice-boat  which  travels  faster  than  the  wind,  and  the  skater 
who  braves  the  wind  and  battles  up-current  in  it.  The 
latter  is  soon  beaten  by  the  opposition  ;  the  former  out- 
runs its  ally.  The  crank,  the  eccentric,  the  enthusiast  — 
all  these  run  counter  to  sane  social  judgment;  but  the 
genius  leads  society  to  his  own  point  of  view,  and  inter- 
prets the  social  movement  so  accurately,  sympathetically, 
and  with  such  profound  insight,  that  his  very  singularity 
gives  greater  relief  to  his  inspiration. 

Now  let  a  man  combine  with  this  insight  —  this  ex- 
traordinary sanity  of  social  judgment  —  the  power  of  great 
inventive  and  constructive  thought,  and  then,  at  last,  we 
have  our  genius,  our  hero,  and  one  that  we  well  may  wor- 
ship !  To  great  thought  he  adds  balance  ;  to  originality, 
judgment.  This  is  the  man  to  start  the  world  movements, 
if  we  want  a  single  man  to  start  them.  For  as  he  thinks 
profoundly,  so  he  discriminates  his  thoughts  justly,  and 
assigns  them  values.  His  fellows  judge  with  him,  or  learn 
to  judge  after  him,  and  they  lend  to  him  the  motive  forces 
of  success,  —  enthusiasm,  reward.  He  may  wait  for  recog- 
nition, he  may  suffer  imprisonment,  he  may  be  muzzled 
for  thinking  his  thoughts,  he  may  die  and  with  him  the 
truth  to  which  he  gave  but  silent  birth.  But  the  world 
comes,  by  its  slower  progress,  to  traverse  the  path  in 


The  Judgment  of  the  Genius  165 

which  he  wished  to  lead  it ;  and  if  so  be  that  his  thought 
was  recorded,  posterity  revives  it  in  regretful  sentences 
on  his  tomb. 

The  two  things  to  be  emphasized,  therefore,  on  the 
rational  side  of  the  phenomenally  great  man  —  I  mean  on 
the  side  of  our  means  of  accounting  for  him  in  reasonable 
terms  —  are  these  :  first,  his  intellectual  originality  ;  and 
second,  the  sanity  of  his  judgment.  And  it  is  the  varia- 
tions in  this  second  sort  of  endowment  which  give  the 
ground  which  various  writers  have  for  the  one-sided  views 
now  current  in  popular  literature. 

1 10.  We  are  told,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  genius  is  a 
'  degenerate ' ;  on  another  hand,  that  he  is  to  be  classed 
with  those  of  'insane'  temper;  and  yet  again,  that  his 
main  characteristic  is  his  readiness  to  outrage  society  by 
performing  criminal  acts.  All  these  so-called  theories 
rely  upon  facts  —  so  far  as  they  have  any  facts  to  rest 
upon  —  which,  if  space  permitted,  we  might  readily  esti- 
mate from  our  present  point  of  view.  In  so  far  as  a  really 
great  man  busies  himself  mainly  with  things  that  are 
objective,  which  are  socially  and  morally  neutral, — such 
as  electricity,  natural  history,  mechanical  theory,  with  the 
applications  of  these,  —  of  course,  the  mental  capacity 
which  he  possesses  is  the  main  thing,  and  his  absorption 
in  these  things  may  lead  to  a  warped  sense  of  the  more 
ideal  and  refined  relationships  which  are  had  in  view 
by  the  writer  in  quest  for  degeneracy.  It  will  still  be 
admitted,  however,  by  those  who  are  conversant  with  the 
history  of  science,  that  the  greatest  scientific  geniuses 
have  been  men  of  profound  quietness  of  life  and  normal 
social  development.  It  is  to  the  literary  and  artistic 
genius  that  the  seeker  after  abnormality  has  to  turn  ;  and 


1 66  Tke  Genius 

in   this   field,  again,  the  facts  serve   to  show  their  own 
meaning. 

As  a  general  rule,  these  artistic  prodigies  do  not 
represent  the  union  of  variations  which  we  find  in  the 
greatest  genius.  Such  men  are  often  distinctly  lacking  in 
power  of  sustained  constructive  thought.  Their  insight 
is  largely  what  is  called  intuitive.  They  have  flashes  of 
emotional  experience  which  crystallize  into  single  creations 
of  art.  They  depend  upon  'inspiration'  —  a  word  which 
is  responsible  for  much  of  the  overrating  of  such  men,  and 
for  a  good  many  of  their  .illusions.  Not  that  they  do  not 
perform  great  feats  in  the  several  spheres  in  which  their 
several  '  inspirations '  come ;  but  with  it  all  they  often 
present  the  sort  of  unbalance  and  fragmentary  intellectual 
endowment  which  allies  them,  in  particular  instances,  to 
the  classes  of  persons  whom  the  theories  I  am  discussing 
have  in  view.  It  is  only  to  be  expected  that  the  sharp 
jutting  variation  in  the  emotional  and  aesthetic  realm 
which  the  great  artist  often  shows,  should  carry  with  it 
irregularities  in  heredity  in  other  respects.1  Moreover, 
the  very  habit  of  living  by  inspiration  brings  prominently 
into  view  any  half-hidden  peculiarities  which  he  may  have 
in  the  remark  of  his  associates,  and  in  the  conduct  of  his 
own  social  duties.  But  mark  you,  I  do  not  discredit  the 
superb  art  of  many  examples  of  the  artistic  '  degenerate,' 

1  Just  as  also  with  the  criminal ;  both  he  and  such  geniuses  may  have 
physical  defects,  various  so-called  '  stigmata ' ;  but  it  is  evident  that  it  is 
incompetent  logic  which  finds  in  these  stigmata  the  'signs'  or  invariable 
accompaniments  either  of  genius  or  of  criminality.  And  it  is,  a  fortiori, 
worse  logic  to  reverse  the  proposition  and  say  that  a  man  with  so-and-so- 
shaped  ears,  a  trembling  palate,  or  a  prognathous  jaw,  has  either  the  one  or 
the  other.  Possibly  the  best  refutation  of  Nordau,  Lombroso,  and  the  rest, 
on  pathological  grounds,  is  Hirsch's  book,  Genius  and  Degeneration. 


The  Judgment  of  the  Genius  167 

so  called;  that  would  be  to  brand  some  of  the  highest 
ministrations  of  genius,  to  us  men,  as  random  and  illegiti- 
mate, and  to  consider  impure  some  of  our  most  exalting 
and  intoxicating  sources  of  inspiration.  But  I  do  still  say 
that  wherein  such  men  move  us  and  instruct  us  they  are 
in  these  spheres  above  all  things  sane  with  our  own  sanity, 
and  wherein  they  are  insane  they  do  discredit  to  that 
highest  of  all  offices  to  which  their  better  gifts  make 
legitimate  claim  —  the  instruction  of  mankind. 

in.  Does  not  any  theory  of  man  which  loses  sight  of 
the  supreme  sanity  of  Darwin,1  and  with  him  of  Aristotle, 
and  Angelo,  and  Leonardo,  and  Newton,  and  Leibnitz,  and 
Shakespeare,  seem  weak  and  paltry?  Beside  the  work 
of  these  men,  do  not  the  contributions  of  the  talented 
special  performer  sink  into  something  like  apologies  — 
something  even  like  profanation  of  that  name  to  conjure 
by,  the  name  of  genius  ?  But,  on  the  other  hand,  why 
run  to  the  other  extreme  and  make  this  most  supremely 
human  of  all  men  an  anomaly,  a  prodigy,  a  bolt  from  the 
blue,  an  element  of  disorder,  born  to  further  or  distract 
the  progress  of  humanity  by  a  chance  which  no  man  can 
estimate  ? .  The  resources  of  psychological  theory  are  ade- 
quate to  the  construction  of  a  doctrine  of  society  which 
is  based  upon  the  individual,  in  all  the  possibilities  of  vari- 
ation which  his  heredity  may  bring  forth,  and  which  yet 
does  not  hide  nor  veil  those  heights  of  human  greatness 

1  In  the  original  publication  of  this  chapter  {Pop.  Set.  Monthly,  August, 
1896),  I  used  Darwin's  formulation  of  the  principle  of  variations  (with  natural 
selection)  as  an  appropriate  illustration  of  the  'judgment'  of  the  genius;  the 
more  appropriate  as  being  itself  the  explaining  principle  applied  in  the  text. 
I  am  interested  to  find  Professor  Poulton  {Charles  Darwin,  p.  12  f.)  empha- 
sizing the  same  characteristic  of  Darwin's  genius.  I  reprint  my  remarks  on 
the  subject,  together  with  a  quotation  from  Professor  Poulton,  in  Appendix  G. 


1 68  Tlie  Genius 

on  which  the  halo  of  genius  is  wont  to  rest.  Let  us  add 
knowledge  to  our  surprise  in  the  presence  of  such  a  man, 
and  respect  to  our  knowledge,  and  worship,  if  you  please, 
to  our  respect ;  and  with  it  all  we  then  begin  to  see  that 
because  of  him  the  world  is  the  better  place  for  us  to  live 
in  and  to  work  in. 

So  we  find  that,  after  all,  we  may  be  social  philosophers 
and  hero-worshippers  as  well.  And  by  being  philosophers 
we  have  made  our  worship  more  an  act  of  tribute  to 
human  nature.  Given  a  philosophy  that  brings  the  great 
into  touch  with  the  commonplace,  that  delineates  the 
forces  which  arise  to  their  greatest  grandeur  only  in  a 
man  here  and  there,  that  enables  us  to  contrast  the  best 
in  us  with  the  poverty  of  him,  and  then  we  may  do  intel- 
ligent homage.  To  know  that  the  greatest  men  of  earth 
are  men  who  think  as  I  do,  but  deeper,  and  see  the  real 
as  I  do,  but  clearer,  who  work  to  the  goal  that  I  do,  but 
faster,  and  serve  humanity  as  I  do,  but  better,  —  that 
may  be  an  incitement  to  my  humility,  but  it  is  also  an 
inspiration  to  my  life. 

§  3.    The  Inventions  of  the  Genius 

With  the  foregoing  description  of  the  type  of  man  to 
whom  the  appellation  '  genius '  may  be  properly  applied,  it 
is  of  further  interest  to  look  with  closer  scrutiny  upon  the 
inventions  which  he  produces  ;  with  a  view  to  finding  some- 
thing of  their  general  character,  and  the  grounds  of  their 
influence  as  factors  in  the  progress  of  mankind.  The 
mechanical  arts  owe  their  progress  so  evidently  to  the 
inventions  which  single  men  make,  and  the  movements 
of  masses  of  people  turn  so  often  upon  the  social  effects 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  169 

which  such  contrivances  bring  about,  that  any  light  we 
may  be  able  to  get  from  this  source  on  the  motives  of 
collective  action  should  be  turned  to  account.  There  are 
some  considerations  which  give  justification  to  the  brief 
discussion  of  this  topic. 

112.  The    inventions  of  genius   fall    into   two   classes. 
First,  there   are   the  scientific   inventions,  which    may  be 
described  as,  in  each  case,  either  the  discovery  of  some 
new  truth,  whether  it  be  in  science  proper,  in  literature, 
or  in  social  life  ;  or  in  the  new  adaptation  and  application 
of  some  aspect  of   knowledge  already  more  or  less  ade- 
quately understood.     And   second,  there  are  the  (Esthetic 
inventions,    which    are    new  dispositions    of   the  material 
of   thought  viewed   as  arousing   emotion  and   sentiment. 
These  two  classes  of  inventive  creations  are  not  mutually 
exclusive  ;  nor  can  they  be  said  to  have  strict  psychologi- 
cal justification  as  classes.     For  the  new  fact  of  science,  or 
the  new  application  of  a  scientific  principle,  arouses  emo- 
tion ;  and  the  aesthetic  constructions  of  the  artist  serve  to 
enlarge  knowledge  and  refine  human  appreciation  of  truth. 
But,  on  the  surface,  these  two  traditional  aspects  of  the 
novelties    which    the   inventive    mind    puts    forth    are    so 
clearly  distinguished   from  each  other,  and   the  types  of 
mind  which  represent  them  respectively  are  so  disparate 
and    so   seldom   found   in   the    same   individual,   that  we 
may  well  distinguish  them  with  reference  to  their  social 
meaning. 

1 13.  The  so-called  scientific  inventions,  removed  as  they 
seem  to  be  from  the  progress  of  social  life,  have  important 
bearings  upon  it  nevertheless.     We   only  need  to  be  re- 
minded of   the    printing-press,  the    cotton-gin,  the   loom, 
the    threshing   and   reaping  machines,   the  steam-engine, 


1 70  The  Genius 

and  the  steamboat  —  to  take  only  those  specimens  of  me- 
chanical invention  which  make  our  modern  era  great  — 
to  see  that  because  of  these  contrivances  our  life  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  our  fathers'.  The  social  effects 
of  the  railway  and  the  telegraph  are  enormous.  The 
newspaper,  with  all  its  educating  influence ;  the  library 
in  the  home,  the  school,  and  the  village  building ;  these 
are  the  results  of  the  printing-press.  And  almost  all  of 
the  marked  characteristics  of  our  daily  life,  as  far  as  they 
have  a  material  side,  will  be  found  to  have  a  direct  depend- 
ence upon  the  inventive  thought  of  some  one  man  who 
first  planned  this  or  that  mechanical  innovation. 

There  are  two  great  ways  of  looking  at  the  function  of 
these  inventions,  apart  from  merely  descanting  upon  the 
wonder  and  magnitude  of  them.  These  two  ways  of  con- 
sidering them  fall  in  with  the  earlier  aspects  of  social  life 
already  emphasized.  All  inventions  may  be  considered 
on  the  side  of  social  heredity ;  and  as  such  their  signifi- 
cance becomes  that  of  the  other  great  incentives  to  the 
learner  —  the  'social  aids  to  invention,'  as  we  have  had 
occasion  to  call  the  channels  of  tradition  and  acquisition. 
Inventions,  from  this  point  of  view,  remain  a  part  of  the 
social  heritage  which  posterity  shares,  as  riches  common 
to  society.  They  go  to  direct  social  habit. 

The  second  aspect  of  discovery  is  what,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  may  call  its  accommodation  function.  Inventions 
are  new  elements  brought  into  social  life,  new  ways  of  doing 
things  ;  calling  for  new  training,  and  requiring  new  ways 
of  living  to  which  the  people  have  to  be  accommodated  or 
adapted.  I  shall  take  up  these  two  points  in  turn.1 

1  It  is  also  largely  through  his  inventions  that  man  is  able  to  work  the  changes 
in  his  environment  which  we  often  sum  up  by  the  phrase  '  conquering  nature.' 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  171 

114.  I.  The  psychological  processes  of  the  inventor, 
whose  procedure  has  been  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  '  In- 
vention," show  us  that  an  effective  invention  is  always  rooted 
in  the  knowledge  already  possessed  by  society.  No  effective 
invention  ever  makes  an  absolute  break  with  the  culture,1 
tradition,  fund  of  knowledge  treasured  up  from  the  past. 
The  education  of  the  inventive  genius  makes  him  ame- 
nable to  the  judgments  of  society,  and  he  himself  .reflects 
the  same  standards  of  judgment.  To  invent  a  social 
thing  without  using  material  current  in  his  environment 
would  be  as  impossible  to  a  man  as  to  think  anything 
without  using  the  materials  of  his  own  memory  and  past 
imagination.  It  is  a  commonplace  in  psychology  that, 
however  fanciful  the  combinations  which  arise  in  our 
imaginations,  or  how  grotesque  the  form  in  which  our 
fancies  parade,  they  must  contain  elements  which  have 
occurred  at  some  time  in  the  experience  or  in  the  fancy  of 
the  individual.  This  is  as  true  of  the  social  imagination  as 
it  is  of  the  individual's  imagination.  Nothing  takes  form  in 
the  usages  and  institutions  of  society  absolutely  per  saltum. 

Just  as  there  is,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  individual,  a 
drift  of  personal  tendency  and  a  set  of  selected  and 
dominant  images  which  make  an  'apperceiving  mass'  to 
which  all  the  novelties  of  his  thought  must  conform  and 
from  which  they  take  their  origin  ;  so  also  is  there  on 
the  other  hand,  in  society,  the  mass  of  traditions,  con- 
Certain  writers  have  correctly  insisted  that  this  is  an  important  factor  in  social 
progress :  for  if  nature  were  not  '  conquered '  men  would  remain  in  many 
respects  isolated  and  their  social  capabilities  would  be  in  so  far  undeveloped. 

1  Of  course  the  nearest  approach  to  this  would  be  the  scientific  discovery  of 
something  absolutely  unrelated  to  earlier  knowledge;  or  something  contradic- 
tory to  current  beliefs,  as  the  Copernican  theory  (which,  however,  drew  upon 
the  data  of  common  knowledge). 


172  TTte  Genius 

ventions,  established  usages,  formal  institutions,  industrial 
and  political  customs,  which  set  limits  to  the  new. 

The  individual's  creations  are  his  only  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  through  him  that  the  elements  of  social  tradition 
show  themselves  in  their  concrete  variations ;  and  if 
perchance  the  creations  of  the  genius  seem  in  a  measure 
to  violate  tradition  and  to  be  judged  more  truly  by  the 
thinker  than  by  society,  nevertheless,  even  such  real  addi- 
tions to  possible  human  achievement  do  not  become  the 
social  success  which  makes  them  additions  to  human  cult- 
ure, until  society  do  come  up  to  the  standard  of  judg- 
ment which  they  require.  So  that  while  we  may  say,  as 
we  have,  that  the  inventor  himself  may  be  a  variation  of 
such  a  kind  as  to  seem  far  removed  from  the  ordinary 
standards  of  society,  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  his  inven- 
tion, if  it  is  to  be  a  factor  of  social  progress. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  indeed,  that  the  problem 
of  the  invention  itself,  considered  as  a  factor  in  human 
progress,  is  quite  different  from  the  problem  of  the  inventor, 
considered  as  a  man.  The  invention  cannot  be  an  element 
in  human  progress  unless  it  enter  into  the  network  of 
social  relationships  in  some  way.  If  it  do  not,  it  may  be 
a  thing  of  great  ingenuity  and  originality ;  but  that  only 
makes  it  a  part  of  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  man. 
It  then  loses  its  interest  as  a  thing  of  social  value. 

1 15.  The  reason  that  an  invention  or  discovery  gets  im- 
portance in  the  social  movement  is  that  it  arouses  human 
attitudes  of  some  kind.  The  adjustments  already  effected 
in  society  represent,  as  we  have  seen,  the  various  and  very 
complex  conditions  of  human  activity  up  to  the  present. 
Society  is  stable  only  because  these  relationships  are,  in 
the  long  run  and  on  the  average,  constant.  The  attitudes 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  173 

of  employer  and  employed,  the  holiday  privileges,  hours  of 
work,  scale  of  wages,  kind  of  domestic  life,  —  all  of  these 
things  are  the  gradual  outcome  of  an  enormously  complex 
system  of  personal  attitudes  and  claims ;  and  the  relative 
satisfaction  with  them  represents  the  constant  interaction 
of  these  attitudes  and  their  discharge  in  actual  and  mutual 
service.  Now  this  adjustment  is  usually  contingent  upon 
some  more-or-less  important  invention,  upon  some  thought 
or  system  of  thoughts  which  represented  some  one's 
originality.  The  inventions,  therefore,  using  the  word  in 
the  widest  sense,  are  the  points  of  emphasis,  the  nuclei,  so 
to  speak,  the  centres,  from  which  diverging  interests  radi- 
ate. The  normal  course  of  a  man's  life  flows  about  some 
single  idea,  established  scheme,  institution,  or  even  some 
single  machine,  which  represents  what  to  him  is  the  out- 
come of  the  thought  and  personal  effort  of  mankind  in  a 
particular  direction.  The  inventions,  then,  may  be  taken 
as  representing  the  advance  guard  of  social  progress.  In 
them,  as  in  centres,  the  fund  of  human  mental  and  social 
capital  is  invested.  The  activities  of  men  terminate  on 
them  and  their  support  comes  from  them. 

This  tendency  of  the  interests  of  social  life  to  crystallize 
about  the  greater  thoughts  and  inventions  which  are  em- 
bodied in  it,  shows  itself  in  many  ways.  It  is  a  phe- 
nomenon of  social  habit,  exhibited  on  a  large  scale.  It  is 
the  habit  of  the  race,  which  the  individual  has  to  acquire 
in  his  personal  education.  It  then  controls  his  personal 
habits,  because  it  represents  the  persistent  line  of  activities 
in  the  accomplishment  of  which  his  life  is  spent.  It  is  his 
social  heritage.  The  sorting  of  men  out  in  professions, 
in  trades,  in  colleges,  in  banks,  etc.,  is  but  the  solidifying 
of  the  lines  of  personal  habit  in  forms  suited  to  the  more 


174  TJie  Genius 

effective  pursuit  of  certain  common  aims  and  activities  of 
the  members.  So  whenever  a  new  thought  comes,  or  a 
new  invention,  there  is  likely  to  be  a  great  caving-in  of 
the  social  crust,  so  to  speak.  And  from  this  point  there 
will  again  radiate  a  great  number  of  vested  interests.  In 
fact,  I  find  it  impossible  to  think  of  a  society,  in  any  de- 
veloped sense,  in  which  this  principle  does  not  work  to 
produce  in  every  individual  a  certain  prescribed  range  of 
special  interests,  at  the  centre  of  which  lies  an  idea 
or  thought,  now  a  matter  of  accomplished  social  habit, 
which  gives  movement  to  his  life  and  affords  an  outlet 
to  his  energies. 

116.  This  is  reflected  in  what  is  called  the  'conserva- 
tive '  spirit  in  society.  It  is  the  voice  of  social  habit. 
It  is  the  law  of  social  heredity  proclaiming  itself  in  the 
bosom  of  each  member  of  society.  It  says  to  him : 
"  Guard  well  the  heritage  of  the  fathers ;  listen  not  to  the 
agitator,  the  innovator,  the  advocate  of  change.  The  es- 
tablished is  the  safe ;  it  is  acquired,  it  is  tested  ;  experi- 
ence is  the  best,  indeed  the  only,  teacher  that  organized 
society  may  appeal  to."  This  is  even  more  true  of  society 
than  it  is  of  the  individual ;  for  when  the  individual  makes 
the  mistake  of  venturing  beyond  the  teachings  of  his  pri- 
vate experience,  he  simply  suffers  a  penalty  which  in  the 
future  he  can  avoid  —  except  in  the  cases  mentioned  below, 
in  which  his  indiscretion  costs  him  social  place.  But  it 
is  not  so  in  the  social  realm.  The  very  complexity  of 
the  interests  involved  in  any  social  adjustment,  and  the 
variety  of  individuals  who  may  have  been  brought  by  a 
happy  combination  into  co-operation,  makes  a  single  inno- 
vation irrevocable.  Political  agitators  realize  this,  and 
aim  to  carry  measures  by  a  wave  of  temporary  entliusi- 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  175 

asm  against  the  dictates  of  sound  social  judgment.  A 
detailed  and  complicated  social  arrangement  may  go  to 
pieces  through  a  single  error  of  judgment. 

And  this  applies,  as  has  been  intimated,  to  mistakes 
on  the  part  of  individuals  also,  acting  in  their  social 
capacity.  A  single  lapse  from  convention  or  social  moral- 
ity gives  a  man  a  name  and  reputation  from  which  he 
never  gets  himself  free.  The  tales  of  fiction-writers  often 
turn  upon  this  motive.  A  character  appears  in  a  com- 
munity and  gains  a  high  place  by  his  talents  and  social 
probity,  until  some  rumour  of  an  earlier  crime  comes  to 
blast  all  the  fruitage  of  his  toil ;  the  outcome  of  a  single 
act  weighs  more  than  all  the  record  made  under  the  new 
and  more  difficult  circumstances.  All  this  shows  the 
extreme  force  of  conservative  sentiment  in  matters  of 
social  organization.  It  is  the  governor  of  the  engine,  and 
its  loss  is  sufficient  to  wreck  the  train.  Its  presence  is 
not  an  accident ;  it  is  the  safeguard  which  the  evolution  of 
society  itself  has  produced  as  the  necessary  check  upon 
precipitation  and  ill-judged  change. 

This  principle  of  conservatism  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant elements  of  what  is  meant  by  'public  opinion.'1 

So  far  we  have  reached  a  view  which  teaches  us  that 
the  definite  social  attainment  of  society,  on  the  side  of 
what  is  usually  called  its  material  life,  —  all  the  acquisition 
up  to  the  present,  —  is  embodied  in  the  inventive  thoughts, 
schemes,  institutions,  industrial  arrangements,  etc.,  actually 
existing ;  these  are  the  nuclei  about  which  the  entire  social 
turmoil  centres.  And  the  effect  of  this  growth  of  institu- 
tions about  such  great  germinal  ideas,  or  inventions,  is 
that  men  come  to  invest  all  their  interests  in  these  ideas, 
1  See  below  Chap.  X.,  §  2. 


1 76  The  Genius 

and  so  become  what  we  ordinarily  call  conservative. 
Carrying  these  two  points  along  with  us,  we  may  now  turn 
to  the  other  side  of  the  matter,  still  concerning  ourselves 
mainly  with  the  scientific,  utilitarian,  '  material '  side  of 
invention. 

117.  II.  The  second  general  consideration  is  by  no 
means  inferior  to  the  first.  It  has  to  do  with  the  actual 
growth  of  society,  as  the  other  has  to  do  with  the  conserv- 
ing of  the  attainments  already  made  by  society.  As  we 
have  seen,  society  has  to  have  habits,  traditions,  institu- 
tions, and  with  them  the  conservative  attitude  of  mind 
which  sees  that  these  things  are  jealously  guarded  and  con- 
served. But  it  is  plain  that  if  this  were  all,  no  progress 
would  be  made ;  indeed,  the  conservative  is  usually  the 
hindering  element  in  social  progress.1  Just  as  natural 
development  has  to  see  to  it  that  the  organism  gets  new 
accommodations  which  bring  the  creature  constantly  into 
adaptation  to  the  newer  and  changing  conditions  of  the 
environment,  sometimes  indeed  working  directly  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  habits  already  acquired,  so  also  is  it  with  the 
social  body.  There  must  be  a  principle  of  social  accom- 
modation, analogous  to  the  principle  of  organic  accom- 
modation recognized  in  theories  of  organic  and  mental 
development.  The  requirements  of  the  case  seem  to 
be  essentially  the  same,  in  the  two  spheres.  In  organic 
development,  we  find  the  two  principles  coming  to  unite 
in  those  critical  reactions  which  at  once  illustrate  habit 
and  at  the  same  time  secure  new  adaptations.  In  the 
growth  of  the  individual  child  we  have  seen  that  the 
reactions  which  are  imitative  in  type  accomplish  this ;  by 
them  the  child  expresses  himself  in  the  habitual  ways 

1  See  Chap.  X.,  §  2,  below. 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  177 

which  he  has  already  learned,  and  also  secures  the  new 
actions  which  serve  to  bring  him  into  better  relation  to 
his  social  and  physical  environment.  So  also  recent 
writers  have  found  that  the  theory  of  race  adaptations 
proceeded  upon  the  assumption  of  the  same  type  of  ac- 
tivity in  the  species  which  is  to  live  and  grow.  It  must 
have  reactions  which  constantly  bring  the  exercise  of 
habits  into  conflict  with  the  environment,  so  that  the 
principle  of  natural  selection  may  come  in  to  secure  the 
survival  of  those  which  can  so  modify  their  habits,  so  ac- 
commodate themselves  to  the  newer  conditions  of  living, 
as  to  utilize  them  for  the  purposes  of  life  and  growth. 

When  we  come  to  look  at  the  progress  of  society  from 
the  point  of  view  of  this  analogy,  we  find  in  part  what 
has  already  been  said  in  the  pages  immediately  preceding. 
The  law  of  social  heredity  with  the  conservative  spirit  is 
the  law  of  social  habit.  By  it,  social  reactions  are  made 
permanent  and  secure.  And  the  kind  of  reactions,  atti- 
tudes, institutions,  which  represent  this  law  are  those 
which  are  developed  about  the  great  germinal  ideas  or 
inventions  of  the  past.  The  inventions  of  the  genius 
are  the  nuclei  of  social  habit. 

118.  But  they  are  more.  And  what  more?  —  this  in- 
troduces the  question  of  accommodation.  They  are  the 
loci  of  social  accommodation,  as  well  as  the  nuclei  of  social 
habit.  As  the  habits  of  the  organism  are  the  means  of 
new  organic  adaptations,  so  the  habits  of  the  social  body 
are  at  once  also  the  means  of  its  growth. 

The  way  it  works  is  this.  The  new  invention  comes  to 
create  disturbance.  The  kind  of  disturbance  I  mean  is  the 
kind  which  arises  when  the  fixed  ways  of  social  activity 
of  any  kind  are  violently  wrenched  and  altered.  I 


178  The  Genius 

have  only  to  cite  the  social  disturbances  which  arise 
around  the  introduction  of  new  machines  to  make  my 
meaning  clear.  Riots,  bloodshed,  labour  disputes,  boy- 
cotts, revolutions  of  the  unemployed,  persecutions  of  the 
employing  classes,  attempts  at  conservative  legislation  in 
the  interests  of  classes,  —  these  are  the  historical  wit- 
nesses to  the  critical  part  which  inventions  play  in  the 
evolution  of  social  life.  The  printing-press  drove  the 
illuminator  and  his  art  out  of  existence.  The  reaping- 
machine  made  the  scythe  a  wall  ornament,  and  the  human 
reaper  an  anachronism.  The  steam-engine  relieves  the 
posthorse  of  his  burden  and  the  driver  of  his  employment. 
In  fact,  in  this  material  realm,  the  science  of  archaeology 
is  a  record  of  the  progress  of  humanity  as  it  is  recorded 
in  its  successive  inventions  ;  and  our  museums  are  collec- 
tions whose  main  lesson  perhaps,  to  the  student  of  human 
progress,  is  the  superb  one  that  intellect  is  alive  in  the 
world  and  that  thought  leads,  even  though  it  be  by  con- 
vulsions of  the  social  body  and  by  the  strangulation  of 
outgrown  utilities. 

A  new  invention,  thought,  idea,  in  whatever  realm  of 
our  interests  it  may  be,  is  like  an  electric  spark  in  a  mixt- 
ure of  oxygen  and  hydrogen.  An  explosion  is  the  im- 
mediate result.  But,  as  in  chemistry,  the  explosion  is  the 
incident  merely.  The  result  of  the  explosion  in  chemistry 
is  the  production  of  the  world's  drinking-water.  The  new 
thought  is  an  electric  spark  in  human  affairs  ;  it  does  lead 
to  the  explosions.  Yet  they  are  but  the  sign  of  the  new 
adjustments  which  society  goes  on  to  effect.  The  new 
supersedes  the  old  by  using  it,  remoulding  it,  refining  it  ; 
and  after  such  a  fight  with  the  conservatives,  to  whom  the 
old  is  too  dear,  the  thinkers  who  bring  in  the  new  see 


The  Inventions  of  the  Genius  179 

that  by  it  humanity  has  gained  and  the  millennium  is 
nearer.  TJiere  is  a  precipitation  about  a  new  nucleus, 
That  is  the  method  of  social  accommodation.  And  just 
in  so  far  as  the  new  idea  is  new,  revplutionary,  unheard- 
of,  so  far  will  the  struggle  be  bitter  and  the  chance  of 
its  w.orking  its  way  less. 

1 19.  The  attitude  which  this  law  of  accommodation 
tends  to  bring  about  in  men  is  that  of  opposition  to  con- 
servatism ;  we  call  it  'liberalism.'  It  is  a  tendency  which 
is  very  real  and  powerful  in  society.  It  marks  a  temperar 
ment  in  particular  men,  as  the  conservative  tendency  does 
in  others.  And  any  account  of  the  forces  which  play  in 
social  life  has  mainly  to  do  with  these  great  antithetic 
attitudes,  arising  conspicuously  about  the  thoughts  and  in- 
ventions of  great  men,  but  present  always  in  the  slower 
movements  as  well. 

To  get  the  real  force  of  the  two  principles  now  set  forth, 
we  should  be  well  aware  that  the  word  'invention'  is  not 
confined  in  its  application  to  machines  ;  it  applies  to  orig- 
inal conceptions  of  every  kind.  The  man  who  proposes 
a  new  banking  law,  or  a  new  scheme  of  taxation ;  the  theo- 
rist who  writes  a  persuasive  book  on  the  methods  of  city 
administration  or  on  the  ways  and  means  of  public  educa- 
tion, —  these  men  are  inventors,  and  their  proposals  come 
directly  before  the  people  for  social  assimilation.  The 
socialists  of  to-day  are  a  set  of  more  or  less  original  men, 
who  seek  to  commend  innovations  in  the  actual  adjust- 
ments of  social  forces  to  one  another.  The  secretary  of 
the  navy  who  submits  a  new  scheme  of  coast  defence,  and 
the  continental  statesman  who  has  an  idea  on  the  subject 
of  the  disturbances  in  Armenia,  are  inventors,  and  candi- 
dates each  for  the  honour  of  being  a  social  electric  spark 


180  The  Genius 

which  is  to  produce  an  explosion  and  set  a  permanent 
nucleus  of  progress  —  equally  so  with  the  man  who  in- 
vents duplex  telegraphy  or  a  type-setting  machine.  The 
idea  is  the  thing  —  and  the  man  who  is  able  to  have  the 
idea.  It  then  remains  to  see  what  society  can  do  with 
the  idea,  and  what  the  idea  can  do  with  society. 

When  we  come  to  put  the  two  aspects  of  the  inventor's 
work  together,  we  find  that  it  is  not  so  much  the  particu- 
lar invention  or  discovery  that  our  theory  values,  chosen 
out  to  illustrate  the  principle,  as  the  general  fact  that 
society  proceeds  by  inventive  increments  to  its  store,  both 
of  truth  first  and  of  adaptation  to  truth  afterwards.  Not 
the  great  genius  alone  illustrates  it,  but  every  man,  so 
far  as  he  thinks  out  novelties  which  society  finds  it  pos- 
sible to  embrace  and  assimilate.  The  inventor  of  the  self- 
clasping  collar-button  is  an  original  social  force,  in  the 
same  sense  that  the  Howes  and  the  Hoes  and  the  Edisons 
are  ;  but  to  a  different  degree.  We  can  better  dispense 
with  the  collar-button  than  we  can  with  the  sewing-ma- 
chine ;  but  I  doubt  whether  we  could  dispense  with  all 
the  smaller  inventions  and  adaptations  of  our  lives  as  well 
as  we  could  with  all  the  larger  ones.  This  is  of  course  an 
artificial  comparison  and  a  needless  one ;  but  I  write  it 
out  to  illustrate  the  fact  that  the  theory  which  we  have 
now  worked  out  concerns  itself  with  the  smaller  as  well 
as  with  the  larger  phenomena,  and  reaches  results  which 
set  the  smaller  in  their  place  beside  the  larger.  It  is  a 
commonplace  that  all  great  inventions  are  at  first  rough- 
hewn,  to  a  degree  angular  and  unassimilable,  until  the 
smaller  and  more  painstaking  men  have  modified  them 
into  better  conformity  to  the  actual  demand  which  society 
makes.  The  patent  office  is  full  of  secondary  patents  fol- 


Social  Selection  181 

lowing  the  few  main  ones  which  embody  really  great  and 
novel  ideas.1 

§  4.    Social  and  Imitative  Selection 

1 20.  It  may  be  useful  at  this  point  to  gather  together 
the  various  meanings  which  we  have  found  it  possible  to 
give  to  the  term  '  selection '  when  used  in  its  social  refer- 
ence ;  especially  in  view  of  the  confused  conceptions  to 
which  its  uncritical  use  may  lead.  In  an  earlier  place  2  cer- 
tain of  the  meanings  of  selection  were  pointed  out  with 
especial  reference  to  natural  selection.  In  addition  to 
what  was  said  there,  we  find  it  well  to  suggest  that  the 
phrase  'social  selection'  be  employed  when,  and  only  when, 
there  is  a  real  operation  of  natural  selection  working  upon 
some  form  of  social  variations.  This  is  realized  in  two 
cases. 

First,  we  have  the  form  of  social  selection  which  results 
from  the  competitions  of  individuals  with  one  another  in 
society.  There  is  a  social  survival,  and  even  often  a  physi- 
cal survival,  of  the  socially  fittest  individuals.  The  man 
with  the  '  pull '  gets  the  political  place  because  he  has  the 
social  qualifications  which  his  '  pull '  represents  ;  and  the 
man  who  passes  the  best  competitive  examination  also  gets 
the  place  because  his  qualifications  are  also  specially  fit ; 
in  this  case  fit  for  the  service,  as  in  the  other  the  fitness 
was  for  the  '  pull.'  The  man  of  social  gifts  is  employed  as 
floor-walker  in  the  business  house  ;  and  the  man  who  writes 
a  good  hand  and  so  saves  the  eyes  of  his  employer,  suc- 
ceeds as  book-keeper.  All  these  are  cases  of  '  social  selec- 
tion.' 

1  See  the   discussion   of  the  '  generalization '  worked  by  society,  below, 
Chap.  XL,  §  3. 

2  Sect.  40,  note.     See  also  Sects.  306  f. 


1 82  The  G 01  ins 

Second,  there  is  the  form  of  social  selection  which  illus- 
trates natural  selection  operative  upon  social  groups.  Here 
there  is  the  survival  of  the  group  as  such.  The  fitness  is 
fitness  for  the  requirements  set  by  the  collective  conditions 
of  the  life  of  the  group.  Historically  this  principle,  which 
is  strictly  a  case  of  natural  selection,  has  many  important 
illustrations  in  tribal  and  national  competitions  due  to 
migration,  colonization,  rival  occupation  of  territory,  etc.1 

It  is,  I  think,  with  reference  to  these  sorts  of  selection 
that  the  analogy  between  social  and  biological  progress 
gets  its  force.  Here  we  find  both  natural  selection  and 
physical  heredity,  with  congenital  variations,  in  operation. 
These  sorts  of  selection,  with  the  analogy  in  question, 
should  be  distinguished  with  all  the  more  care  from  those 
in  which  one  or  other  of  these  principles  is  not  operative. 
Especially  should  they  be  distinguished  from  the  different 
forms  of  selection,  so  important  in  social  life,  which  operate 
by  conscious  choice  and  imitation.  The  social  selection  of 
individuals  merges  into  conscious  selection  by  individuals 
when  the  criterion  is  no  longer  the  social  variation  of  the 
one  selected,  but  the  choice  of  the  one  selecting.  This 
distinction  comes  out  in  the  illustrations  given  above ;  the 
choice  of  the  candidate  by  his  friend  may  be  contrasted 
with  his  success  in  the  examination. 

121.  In  so-called  'imitative  selection,'2  with  which  we 
have  more  to  do  later  on,  —  the  imitative  propagation  of 
ideas  in  society, — we  have  a  phenomenon  for  which  biology 

1  It  gives  rise  to  what  may  be  called  the  law  of  '  the  widening  unit,'  ijt. 
that  as  the  circle  of  co-operation  widens  the  unit  of  survival,  the  group,  taken 
as  a  whole,  becomes  larger. 

8  See  above,  Sect.  40,  note.  In  order  to  keep  it  quite  clear  from  biological 
misrepresentations,  as  well  as  to  designate  its  essential  character,  it  is  called 
below  'social  generalization'  (Chap.  XL,  Sects.  309  f.). 


Social  Selection  183 

shows  us  no  analogies.  What  survives  in  this  case  is  not 
individuals,  but  ideas ;  and  these  do  not  survive  in  the 
form  in  which  the  first  thinker  conceives  them,  but  in  the 
form  in  which  society  applies  them.  Again,  their  fitness 
is  not  in  any  sense  fitness  for  struggle ;  it  is  fitness  for 
imitative  reproduction  and  application.  And  finally,  they 
are  not  physically  inherited,  but  handed  down  by  'social 
heredity '  as  accretions  to  the  store  of  tradition. 

These  essential  differences  may  be  summed  up  in  a  way 
which  connects  this  sort  of  selection  —  so-called  'imitative 
selection  '  —  with  what  has  been  said  of  public  opinion,  as 
representing  the  conservative  spirit  in  society.  Public 
opinion  may  be  called  the  organ  of  imitative  selection.  It 
sets  the  standards  with  reference  to  which  the  idea  selected 
shows  its  fitness.  It  represents  the  set  forms  of  tradition 
into  which  the  new  idea  is  to  be  absorbed.  It  brings  to 
bear  the  judgment  which  society  cherishes ;  and  which, 
when  reflected  into  the  thinker  himself,  constitutes  the 
measure  of  his  social  sanity.  It  applies  the  idea,  when 
once  it  is  selected  and  embodied  in  this  institution  or  that, 
to  each  individual  in  turn  in  the  way  which  in  its  broader 
aspects  we  have  called  'social  heredity.'1 

It  remains  only  to  say  that  we  have  now  reached  a 
sort  of  resting-place  in  our  discussion,  from  which  cer- 
tain main  facts  of  social  development  appear  in  view. 
The  essential  meaning  of  the  imitative  and  inventive  prin- 
ciples have  been  discussed  both  on  the  side  of  the  individ- 


1  The  distinction  between  'social  selection*  and  'social  suppression'  (men- 
tioned above,  Chap.  II.,  §  3),  will  be  evident.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
the  law  is  the  administrative  organ  of  the  latter,  public  opinion  being  incom- 
petent to  suppress  individuals.  Cf.  Appendix  B  for  a  classification  of  the  vari- 
ous '  selections.' 


184  The  Genius 

ual's  personal  growth  —  whether  he  be  genius  or  drone  — 
and  of  the  movement  of  society  to  higher  levels  of  com- 
mon accomplishment.  The  outcome  so  far  may  be  em- 
bodied, on  the  part  of  the  individual,  in  the  view  that 
every  man  is  a  socins  ;  and  on  the  side  of  the  social  body, 
in  the  view  that  every  society  reveals  the  socius.  It  follows, 
from  this,  that  there  are  two  fundamental  inquiries  at  the 
bottom  of  any  adequate  theory  of  society.  The  first  is 
this  :  How  far  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  individual  man 
in  society  would  also  be  a  complete  revelation  of  the  society 
which  he  is  in  ?  And  the  second  question  is  this  (the  re- 
verse of  the  other) :  How  far  is  it  necessary  to  understand 
society,  as  it  actually  exists,  in  order  to  construct  an  adequate 
view  of  the  mans  actual  nature  and  social  possibilities  ? 

We  now  find  it  possible  to  go  on  to  the  discussion  of 
these  questions  with  some  hope  of  reaching  results.  It 
will  have  been  observed  that  the  consideration  of  the 
'  aesthetic '  inventions  has  been  left  over  for  the  chapter 
on  'Sentiment.' 


PART  III 
THE  PERSON'S  EQUIPMENT 

CHAPTER  VI 
His  INSTINCTS  AND  EMOTIONS 

IN  the  preceding  pages,  we  have  seen  reason  to  believe 
that  the  individual  has  certain  propensities  toward  life 
with  his  fellows,  and  also  certain  capacities  for  realizing 
his  social  nature  by  action.  It  now  becomes  our  task  to 
inquire  as  to  the  ways  in  which  he  shows  the  social  ele- 
ments of  his  character  in  conduct. 

§  I.    Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion 

122.  The  observation  that  men  are  emotional  animals, 
and  that  emotion  is  a  great  incentive  to  action,  is  a  com- 
monplace. We  need  not  stop  to  define  emotion  nor 
trace  its  genesis  in  the  animal  kingdom.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  may  assume  that  the  reader  has  a  clear  enough 
sense  of  what  emotion  is  when  he  feels  it.  The  remark, 
then,  that  the  social  man  has  emotions  and  that  they 
influence  his  conduct  is  pertinent  here  only  as  indicating 
a  further  problem  :  the  problem,  to  wit,  as  to  how  the 
individual  manifests  his  emotions  and  how  these  mani- 
festations tell,  in  his  social  life,  upon  him  and  upon 
pthers. 


1 86  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

Psychologists  agree  that  emotion  is  generally  an  ac- 
companiment of  ideas.  An  emotion  has  a  distinctive 
character  consonant  with  the  character  of  the  particular 
idea  which  it  accompanies.  A  lion  arouses  fear,  a 
friend  affection,  an  enemy  hate,  etc.  But  there  is  a  fur- 
ther fact  about  the  idea  or  thought  which  one  has  in 
mind  when  he  experiences  a  lively  emotion.  This  appears 
in  the  fact  that  emotions  are  usually  classified  under  two 
great  heads  :  those  which  attract  us  to  an  object  thought 
of,  on  the  one  hand,  and  which  are  accompanied  by  pleas- 
ure, and  those,  on  the  other  hand,  which  repel  us  from  the 
object  and  feel  painful.  The  attracting  emotions  are 
uniformly  pleasurable  and  the  repelling  emotions  painful 
experiences.  And  when  we  come  to  inquire  into  this 
curious  state  of  things,  we  find  only  one  way  to  explain 
either  the  one  or  the  other  pair  of  opposing  facts  —  the 
pair  representing  attraction  and  repulsion  or  the  pair 
representing  pleasure  and  pain.  The  fact  is  this :  that 
there  is  a  centre  of  organic  or  personal  existence  —  a  self 
of  some  kind  —  to  the  welfare  of  which  the  emotion  in 
some  way  refers.  We  say  '/  am  afraid,'  or  '/  love  and 
hate,'  or  'the  lion  frightens  me.'  'When  I  fly  from  a 
fearful  thing,  I  try  to  remove  myself.'  And  when  I 
embrace  a  friend,  hope  for  a  gift,  rejoice  in  an  honour,  it 
is  that  I  myself  find  advantage  in  some  way  in  the  attrac- 
tion exerted  upon  me  by  the  object  involved  in  this  case 
or  that.  This  much  we  may  say,  however  our  opinions 
may  differ  as  to  the  best  way  to  explain  this  reference  of 
emotion  to  the  good  or  evil  involved  for  the  personal 
sjlf.  Certain  emotions,  usually  called  reflective  emotions, 
have  a  distinct  reference  to  our  conscious  thought  of  our 
own  welfare,  or  the  opposite.  First  among  these,  is,  of 


Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion          187 

course,  the  class  of  emotions  known  as  vanity,  pride,  etc., 
in  which  the  thought  of  self  is  very  prominent. 

123.  Granting  so  much  about  emotion,  another  distinc- 
tion arises.     There  are  certain  emotions  whose  reference 
is  distinctly  physical,  organic.     In  the  case  of  these,  the 
seizure  by  the  emotion  does  not  seem  to  require  that  we 
actually  think  of  ourselves.     We  may  not  have  time  to  do 
this.     We  often  simply  find  ourselves  in  or  undergoing  the 
emotion,  and  the  discovery  that  we  are  in  danger  or  in 
joy  is   a  later   thing.      These   emotions   are   said   to   be 
instinctive  or  organic.     They  seem  to  belong  to  the  physi- 
cal organism,  and  to  be  so  closely  knit  into  the  structure 
of  the  body  by  its  heredity  that  they  serve  to  protect  us 
from    harm    and    to    secure    benefits    without    assistance 
from  our  reflective  processes. 

124.  Now  these  two  references  to  a  self-centre  in  the 
emotional  seizure  —  however  different  the  self  may  be  in 
the  two  cases  —  are  each  of  direct  social  importance.     As 
far  as  the  emotion  is  a  matter  of  organic  reaction  merely, 
its  expression  is  an  affair  of  fixed  organic  habit.     It  sug- 
gests to  us  the  question  whether  in  these  organic  exhibi- 
tions of  race  habit  there  is  to  be  found  any  evidence  that 
the  species  to  which  the  individual  in  question  belongs 
has  lived  a  social  life.     Of  course  the  forms  of  reaction 
show  the  general  character  of  the  environment  in  which 
the  emotional  expressions  were  learned  ;  and  if  we  find  in 
them   elements  which  clearly  require  social  environment, 
then  better  evidence  could  not  be  wished  that  such  ances- 
tral  conditions    existed.      How  far,   then,   do  we  find  in 
emotional  expression  evidence  of  the  relations  of  co-opera- 
tion which  social  life  requires  ? 

This  question  has  already  been  answered  in  the  various 


1 88  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

works  in  which  the  social  instincts  have  been  submitted 
to  more  or  less  adequate  examination.  As  far  as  man 
shows  the  social  instincts  of  the  animals,  so  far  we  have 
a  right  to  say  that  his  reactions  may  be  taken  to  show 
that  the  early  social  habits  of  man  were,  in  the  respects 
which  these  reactions  indicate,  the  same  in  kind  as  those 
of  the  animals.  This  is  true  of  the  family  instincts  in 
general :  the  maternal  care,  the  paternal  provision  of  food 
and  watchfulness  in  danger,  the  parental  instruction  in 
movement,  self-support,  etc.,  the  filial  response  to  parental 
care  and  instruction,  the  fraternal  attitude  of  the  young  to 
one  another  in  the  same  family,  the  play-instinct  with  its 
exercises  in  endurance,  defence,  and  skill.  All  these 
things  show  a  common  fund  of  acquisition  by  man  and 
brute,  and  point  back,  I  think,  to  the  race  conditions 
which  were  operative  before  man  appeared  upon  the 
earth.  As  regards  man  himself,  these  tendencies  are,  in 
the  main,  hereditary,  and  the  exercise  of  them  in  a  spon- 
taneous way  by  the  infant  gives  evidence  of  the  law  of 
'  recapitulation  '  in  its  main  conception.1 

In  addition  to  these  instinctive  reactions  of  an  emotional 
kind,  however,  there  are  certain  other  expressions  found  in 
a  marked  degree  in  children,  and  in  animals  sometimes, 
which  it  is  our  immediate  object  to  investigate ;  they  form 
an  apparent  link  in  the  chain  of  facts  upon  which  both 
the  biological  theory  of  recapitulation,  and  also  the  higher 
form  of  the  same  truth  found  in  the  history  of  human  race 
progress,  rest  for  support.  These  facts  are  :  the  mani- 

1  The '  recapitulation '  theory  (according  to  which  the  individual  goes  through 
stages  in  his  development  which  show  in  order  some  of  the  stages  which  the 
species  has  passed  through)  is  discussed  with  reference  to  mental  traits  in  my 
.\fental  Development,  Chap.  I.,  where  references  to  the  biological  literature 
are  also  given. 


Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion          189 

festations  or  expressions  of  certain  emotions  which  have  both 
the  organic  and  later  the  reflective  form  as  well ;  such,  for 
instance,  as  jealousy,  fear,  anger,  and  sympathy.  These 
emotional  expressions,  together  with  the  physical  reac- 
tions which  are  shown  by  young  children  in  what  we 
call  bashfulness  and  in  the  play-instinct,  are,  to  my  mind, 
of  great  importance  in  the  mental  evolution  upon  which 
the  social  life  is  founded.  This  makes  it  well  that  we 
should  understand  more  clearly  the  issues  raised  ;  and  I 
shall  devote  a  few  paragraphs  to  setting  certain  distinc- 
tions out  more  fully,  before  taking  up  the  series  of  facts 
which  are  to  be  cited  in  this  chapter. 

125.  It  appears  that  the  theory  of  'recapitulation'  has 
two  great  spheres  of  application.  It  applies  on  the  animal 
side,  as  usually  studied  by  the  biologists  and  comparative 
psychologists,  and  it  has,  besides,  a  certain  application  on 
the  human  side  —  this  latter  having  to  do  with  what  the 
writers  on  anthropology  call  culture-stages.  In  biology 
and  comparative  psychology  the  question  is  whether  the 
human  organism  and  mind  go  through  stages  which  recapit- 
ulate the  forms  of  the  animal  world ;  the  anthropological 
question,  on  the  other  hand,  is  whether  the  human  indi- 
vidual goes  through  the  stages  of  culture  which  the  human 
race  as  a  species  has  gone  through.  In  discussing  the 
mental  development  of  the  child  we  have  both  these 
problems  to  solve :  the  two  problems,  i.e.,  whether  the 
child's  mental  development  recapitulates  the  stages  of 
mental  development  in  the  animal  world,  and  second, 
whether  it  then  goes  on  to  show,  or  to  recapitulate,  the 
stages  through  which  the  human  mind,  after  it  arose  in 
history,  has  passed  in  our  race  development.1 

1  My  earlier  discussion,  already  referred  to  {Mental  Development,  Chap.  I.), 
takes  up  only  the  first  of  these  questions. 


190  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  social  life  is  mainly  a  matter 
which  falls  under  the  second  inquiry.  Only  in  so  far  as 
the  child  has  the  modicum  of  social  tendencies  which  we 
also  find  in  the  animals  —  only  so  far  can  the  question  as 
to  whether  he  is  recapitulating  animal  forms  of  sociality 
be  put  and  answered.  But  inasmuch  as  the  child  then 
goes  on  to  exhibit  further  reactions  of  a  special  kind,  or 
in  a  special  degree,  which  the  animal  world  does  not  seem 
to  possess,  —  especially  if  these  latter  seem  to  be  super- 
posed upon  the  former  and  to  supersede  them,  —  the 
second  question  of  recapitulation  becomes  pertinent ;  and 
we  then  ask :  Are  these  further  tendencies  of  the  child 
toward  social  life  a  repetition  of  the  development  of  man 
from  the  conditions  of  primitive  life  in  which  he  was  nearer 
to  the  animal  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  supposes 
some  knowledge  of  the  history  of  culture  from  prehistoric 
times  :  the  information  which  the  ethnologist  sets  himself 
to  discover.  Just  as  the  comparative  morphologist  fur- 
nishes his  data  to  the  human  embryologist  and  asks  him 
to  discover  parallels  which  indicate  recapitulation  ;  so  the 
ethnologist  may  come  with  his  determinations  of  the  social 
conditions  of  primitive  man  at  various  epochs,  and  ask  the 
psychologist  to  point  out  parallel  stages  in  the  child's 
progress. 

When  we  come  to  put  together  the  two  spheres  of  ap- 
plication of  the  principle  of  recapitulation,  we  find  that  the 
history  of  the  whole  progress  of  the  animal  series  up  into 
the  human  epoch,  and  also  the  later  history  of  the  man's 
progress  in  social  life,  should  be  given  in  the  child's 
growth.  And  we  cry,  how  rich  a  field  of  study !  But  the 
very  fact  that  the  child  has  to  reveal  so  much,  makes  it 
impossible  to  expect  that  the  record  will  be  complete. 


Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion          191 

On  the  organic  side,  we  find  a  reasonably  complete  record 
of  animal  progress  in  biological  development ;  but  the 
very  fact  that  it  was  only  after  man  had  come  that  the 
development  of  the  social  life  began  which  requires  much 
intelligent  co-operation  —  this  tends  to  obscure  the  earlier 
stages  of  mental  development.  In  order  to  be  reflectively 
social,  the  child  must  be  less  aggressive,  more  tolerant, 
more  adaptable,  less  dominated  by  inflexible  instinct.  But 
in  order  to  this,  those  stages  of  the  development  in  the 
animal  mind  which  require  the  opposite  qualities,  such  as 
high  instinctive  equipment,  must  be  either  quickly  passed 
over  by  the  child,  or  be  absent  altogether.  If  this  general 
point  be  true,  then  we  should  expect  to  find  in  the  mental 
development  of  the  child  only  those  mental  traits  of  the 
animals  which  could  exist  along  with  the  higher  social 
development  which  comes  to  be  an  essential  thing  in 
human  life. 

126.  Such  traits,  we  do  find,  as  a  fact,  in  the  child :  cer- 
tain great  systems  of  reactions  and  their  mental  accompani- 
ments which  bear  such  a  construction.  These  reactions 
seem  to  be  original  elements  in  his  hereditary  equipment. 
They  seem  to  be  well  explained  by  the  law  of  organic 
recapitulation. 

Yet  we  find  that  they  are  also  capable  of  a  construction 
which  would  have  placed  them  as  the  results  of  intelligent 
adaptation  and  social  co-operation.  They  can  be  explained 
as  illustrating  the  later  or  anthropological  sort  of  recapitu- 
lation. These  are  the  emotional  expressions  of  which  I 
am  about  to  speak. 

To  cite  an  instance  :  the  child  shows  certain  native  ex- 
pressions of  affection  which  are  common  to  him  and  the 
dog.  These  common  expressions  can  only  be  accounted  for 


192  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

as  having  arisen  ancestrally  under  conditions  in  which,  in 
certain  respects,  the  dog  now  is,  or  earlier.  But  after  the 
child  grows  older,  we  find  that  his  intelligent  expressions 
of  affection  take  the  same  cliannels.  If  we  had  not  seen 
them  in  the  child  at  the  earlier  period,  we  should  have 
said,  quite  possibly,  still  applying  the  theory  of  recapitula- 
tion, that  they  represented  the  period  in  the  development 
of  the  human  race  when  certain  ways  of  intelligent  action 
in  a  social  community  were  found  useful.  There  are  here, 
therefore,  two  different  assignments  of  these  reactions 
by  the  recapitulation  theorist.  This  serves  to  show  how 
rich  a  field  for  interpretation  these  emotional  expressions 
are.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Darwin,  and  the  other 
writers  who  have  studied  them,  have  with  rare  exceptions, 
as  far  as  I  know,  confined  the  interpretation  to  the  utilities 
in  the  animal  series,  without  inquiring  into  the  culture- 
history  side ;  that  is,  without  inquiring  as  to  the  second  or 
intelligent  utility  which  the  same  reactions  subserve  in 
the  history  of  human  development,  together  with  the  cor- 
respondence between  the  two. 

127.  As  to  the  relative  effects  which  these  two  kinds 
of  recapitulation  produce  in  the  child's  development,  cer- 
tain truths  may  be  made  out.  We  may  say  (i)  in  so  far 
as  the  heredity  of  the  child's  animal  ancestry  tended  to 
come  into  conflict  with  the  requirements  of  the  social  de- 
velopment of  the  race  of  mankind,  then  the  former  must 
have  been  obliterated  ;  since,  as  a  fact,  the  child  does  ful- 
fil the  requirements  of  social  development.  The  self-seek- 
ing tendencies  of  the  animal  must  give  place  to  co-operation 
and  sympathy.  And  the  process  of  selection,  in  order  to 
get  the  human  race  started  on  a  career  of  sociability,  must 
have  put  a  premium  upon  variations  which  did  this.  (2)  In 


Instinctive  and  Reflective  Emotion          193 

so  far  as  the  organic  reflexes  of  animal  instinct,  which  had 
proved  useful  to  the  animal,  did  not  hinder  the  develop- 
ment of  the  social  ways  of  action  thus  put  at  a  premium, 
they  would  run  an  equal  chance  of  still  surviving  for  the 
sake  of  their  older  utility.  And  (3)  in  so  far  as  the  animal 
modes  of  action  served  purposes  which  were  favourable  to 
the  growth  of  social  life,  or  could  be  pressed  into  the 
newer  utilities  of  social  life,  then  these  reactions  would  be 
confirmed  and  further  developed.  The  germs  of  social 
life  found  in  the  gregarious  habits  of  certain  animals  were 
available  for  further  development  in  man. 

The  first  of  these  three  classes  of  cases  we  find  illus- 
trated, in  the  human  young,  in  the  absence  of  native  in- 
stincts impelling  to  co-ordinated  systems  of  movement 
apart  from  certain  combinations  which  are  actually  neces- 
sary to  his  life.  And  the  reason  becomes  clearer  when  we 
remember  what  has  already  been  said  as  to  the  need  of  the 
child's  having  all  his  members  so  plastic  and  unconstrained 
as  to  learn,  as  fast  as  possible,  the  acts  of  skill  which  his 
social  environment  requires  of  him.  These  acts  are  so 
varied  that  the  same  muscles  and  members  have  to  be 
used  in  the  greatest  variety  of  combinations ;  a  need 
which  could  not  be  fulfilled  if  these  muscles  and  the  brain 
matter  which  works  them  were  already  tied  up  in  such  in- 
stincts as  those  possessed  by  the  animals.  Plasticity  is 
the  rule  of  social  life,  and  its  requirement ;  the  opposite 
is  the  condition  represented  by  animal  instinct. 

The  second  and  third  cases  also  have  instructive  exam- 
ples. We  may  ask  why  the  arms  are  no  longer  legs, 
while  the  legs  are  still  legs.  The  reason  is  plain.  The 
purposes  of  locomotion  require  legs ;  the  legs  remain  legs 
because  to  lose  all  legs  would  have  been  to  lose  life. 


194  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

These  organs  are  continued  because  they  continue  a  func- 
tion which  the  new  dawning  social  life  not  only  does  not 
antagonize,  but  actually  requires.  But  the  arms  cease  to 
be  legs  because  a  social  function  can  be  found  for  them 
without  sacrificing  any  essential  animal  function.  This 
the  organism  found  a  way  of  effecting  as  soon  as  the 
adaptation  which  we  call  upright-walking  was  reached. 
So  the  fore  paw,  with  its  flat  simplicity  of  use,  became  the 
human  hand  —  that  most  marvellous  implement  of  human 
utility.  The  tongue  is  a  case  in  which  the  old  and  the  new 
functions  exist  together  in  the  same  member :  eating  and 
speech. 

128.  The  third  of  these  cases  —  the  ratification  and 
further  development  for  social  utilities  of  the  ways  of 
animal  action  which  first  rose  for  organic  utilities  —  this 
brings  us  again  to  the  emotional  expressions  which  we  set 
out  to  examine. 

The  thing  which  strikes  us  at  the  outset,  in  taking  up 
the  emotional  expressions  which  have  social  value,  is  just 
their  double  meaning.  That  they  have  this  double  mean- 
ing indicates,  again,  two  general  things  about  their  condi- 
tions of  rise  and  their  relation  to  each  other.  First,  it  is 
evident  that,  in  order  to  persist  in  the  social  development 
of  mankind  after  serving  their  utility  in  the  animal  series, 
—  while,  as  we  have  seen,  so  many  other  animal  reactions 
did  not  persist,  —  they  must  have  represented  adaptations 
to  a  pre-social  environment  which  was  at  least  consistent 
with  the  social  environment,  if  not  actually  in  a  measure 
social.  And,  second,  it  must  mean  that  when  taken  to- 
gether all  these  reactions  are  to  be  explained,  along  with 
the  new  social  adaptations  which  have  been  built  up 
upon  them,  by  one  general  life-tendency.  That  is,  the 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  195 

drift  of  the  selective  principle  must  have  been  to  conserve 
and  develop  these  sorts  of  reaction.  And  from  these 
truths  the  further  one  seems  to  be  reached:  that  the 
principles  of  selection  and  survival  get  a  construction 
which  shall  secure  social  progress?- 

§  2.    Bashfulness  and  Modesty 

129.  The  more  evident  physical  accompaniments  of 
bashfulness  in  the  child  have  been  well  set  forth  by  various 
writers ;  and  one  at  least  of  the  signs  of  modesty,  by  far 
the  most  striking  sign  in  the  youth  and  adult,  blushing, 
has  been  discussed  in  some  detail  by  Darwin.2  The  fol- 
lowing description  of  the  phenomena  of  bashfulness,  with 
hints  as  to  the  phylogenetic  meaning,  may  be  quoted  from 
my  earlier  work.3 

"  It  [bashfulness]  begins  to  appear  generally  in  the  first 
year,  showing  itself  as  an  inhibiting  influence  upon  the 
child's  normal  activities.  Its  most  evident  signs  are  ner- 
vous fingerings  of  dress,  objects,  hands,  etc.,  turning  away 
of  head  and  body,  bowing  of  head  and  hiding  of  face, 
awkward  movements  of  trunk  and  legs,  and  in  extreme 
cases,  reddening  of  the  face,  puckering  of  lips  and  eye 
muscles,  and  finally  cries  and  weeping.  An  important  dif- 
ference, however,  is  observable  in  these  exhibitions  accord- 
ing as  the  child  is  accompanied  by  a  familiar  person  or  not. 
When  the  mother  or  nurse  is  present,  many  of  the  signs 
seem  to  be  useful  in  securing  concealment  from  the  eye  of 
strangers  —  behind  dress  or  apron  or  figure  of  the  familiar 
person.  In  the  absence,  however,  of  such  a  refuge,  the 

1  Cf.  Appendix  A,  Organic  Selection  and  Social  Heredity. 

2  See  also  Mosso,  Fear. 

8  Baldwin,  Mental  Development,  Chap.  VI.,  §  6. 


196  His  Instincts  a)td  Emotions 

child  sinks  often  into  a  state  of  general  passivity  or  inhibi- 
tion of  movement,  akin  to  the  sort  of  paralysis  usually  asso- 
ciated with  great  fear. 

"This  analogy  with  the  physical  signs  of  fear,  gives  a 
real  indication,  I  think,  of  the  race  origin  of  bashfulness ; 
it  is  probably  a  differentiation  of  fear.  This  I  cannot 
dwell  upon  now,  but  simply  suggest  that  bashfulness  arose 
as  a  special  utility-reaction  on  occasion  of  fear  of  persons, 
in  view  of  personal  qualities  possessed  by  the  one  who 
fears.  The  concealing  tendency  also  shows  the  parallel 
development  of  intimate  personal  relationships  of  protec- 
tion, support,  etc.,  and  so  gives  indications  of  certain  early 
social  conditions. 

"  My  observations  of  bashfulness  —  not  to  dwell   upon 
descriptions  which  have  been  made  before  by  others  — 
serve  to  throw  the  illustrations  of  it  into  certain  periods 
or  epochs  which  may  be  briefly  characterized  in  order. 

"  i.  The  child  is  earliest  seized  with  what  may  be  called 
'primary'  or  'organic'  bashfulness,  akin  to  the  organic 
stages  in  the  well-recognized  instinctive  emotions,  such  as 
fear,  anger,  sympathy,  etc.  This  exhibition  occurs  in  the 
first  year,  and  marks  the  attitudes  of  the  infant  toward 
strangers.  It  is  not  so  much  inhibitory  of  action  in  this 
first  stage;  it  rather  takes  on  the  positive  signs  of  fear, 
with  protestation,  shrinking,  crying,  etc. 

"  The  duration  of  this  stage  depends  largely  upon  the 
child's  social  environment.  The  passage  from  the  attitude 
of  instinctive  antipathy  toward  outsiders,  and  that  of  affec- 
tion equally  instinctive  toward  the  members  of  the  house- 
hold, over  into  a  more  reasonable  sense  of  the  difference 
between  tried  friends  and  unproved  strangers  -this  de- 
pends directly  upon  the  growth  of  the  sense  of  general 


197 

social  relationships  established  by  experience.  One  of  the 
most  important  elements  in  the  child's  progress  in  this 
way  out  of  its  '  organic '  social  life,  is  the  degree  and 
variety  of  its  intercourse  with  other  children,  and  indeed 
with  other  adults  than  those  of  its  own  home. 

"  2.  I  find  next  a  period  of  strong  social  tendency  in  the 
child,  of  toleration  of  strangers  and  liking  for  persons  gen- 
erally, in  great  contrast  to  the  attitudes  of  organic  distrust 
of  the  earlier  period  just  mentioned.  There  seems  to  be  in 
this  a  reaction  against  the  instinct  of  social  self-preservation 
characteristic  of  the  earlier  stage.  It  is  due  in  all  likelihood 
to  the  actual  experience  of  the  child  in  receiving  kind  treat- 
ment from  strangers  —  kinder  in  the  way  of  indiscriminate 
indulgence  than  the  more  orderly  treatment  which  it  gets 
from  its  own  parents.  Everybody  comes  to  be  trusted  on 
first  acquaintance,  by  the  child,  through  the  teachings  of 
his  own  experience,  just  as  in  the  earlier  years  everybody 
was  treated  by  him,  under  the  instincts  of  his  inherited 
nature,  as  an  agent  of  possible  harm. 

"  3.  Finally,  I  note  the  return  of  bashf ulness  in  the 
child's  second  and  third  years.  This  time  it  is  bashfulness 
in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  rid  of  the  element  of  fear, 
and  rid  largely  of  its  compelling  organic  force  and  meth- 
ods of  expression.  The  bashful  three-year-old  smiles  in 
the  midst  of  his  hesitations,  draws  near  to  the  object  of 
his  curiosity,  is  evidently  overwhelmed  with  the  sense 
of  his  own  presence  rather  than  with  that  of  his  new 
acquaintance,  and  indulges  in  actions  calculated  to  keep 
notice  drawn  to  himself. 

"  The  reality  of  this  group  of  the  child's  social  attitudes, 
and  the  great  contrast  which  they  present  to  those  of  the 
organic  period,  can  hardly  have  too  much  emphasis.  It 


198  His  Instincts  and  Emotiotis 

is  one  of  the  great  outstanding  facts  of  his  progressive 
relation  to  the  elements  of  his  social  milieu.  There  is  a 
sort  of  self-exhibition,  almost  of  coquetry,  in  the  child's 
behaviour;  which  shows  the  most  remarkable  commin- 
gling of  native  organic  elements  with  the  social  lessons 
of  personal  well-  and  ill-desert  which  are  now  becoming 
of  such  importance  in  his  life.  All  this  makes  so 
marked  a  contrast  to  the  exhibitions  of  organic  bashful- 
ness  that  it  constitutes  in  my  opinion  a  most  important 
resource  for  the  study  of  the  evolution  of  the  social 
sense. 

"The  observation  of  organic  bashfulness  tends  to  con- 
firm our  view  of  the  way  the  child  begins  to  apprehend 
persons ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  enables  us  to  see  a  little 
further.  For,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  we  are  here  con- 
fronted with  an  element  of  organic  equipment  especially 
fitted  to  receive  and  respond  to  these  peculiar  objects, 
persons:  'personal  projects.'  The  child  strikes  instinc- 
tively a  particular  series  of  attitudes  when  persons  ap- 
pear among  his  objects,  attitudes  which  other  objects, 
qua  objects,  do  not  excite.  And  later  in  life,  in  the  organic 
effects  indicative  of  modesty,  such  as  blushing,  hesitating, 
etc.,  we  find  familiar  signs  of  a  social  rapport  which  has 
grown  into  the  very  fibre  of  our  nerves.  We  have  to 
say,  therefore,  that  the  child  is  born  to  be  a  member  of 
society  in  the  same  sense  precisely  that  he  is  born  with 
eyes  and  ears  to  see  and  hear  the  movements  and  sounds 
of  the  world,  and  with  touch  to  feel  the  things  of 
space." 

130.  These  facts,  with  the  inferences  from  them,  may 
be  taken  as  sufficient  for  purposes  of  description.  The 
two  principles  which  seem  to  be  revealed  are  :  first,  that 


Bashf illness  and  Modesty  199 

these  reactions,  taken  as  a  whole,  indicate  the  existence  of 
social  conditions  so  far  back  in  the  organic  ancestry  of  the 
child  that  the  reactions  which  show  adaptation  to  such  an 
environment  have  actually  become  ingrained  in  the  ner- 
vous structure  of  the  child  to  the  extent  that  the  functions 
are  now  instinctive.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
young  chick  would  heed  the  warning  note  of  the  hen  when 
the  hawk  flies  over,  unless  his  ancestors  had  experienced 
similar  common  dangers ;  so  it  is  impossible  to  believe 
that  the  child  could  show  instinctive  bashfulness  before 
persons  except  on  the  supposition  that  his  ancestors  have 
sustained  close  relations  of  some  kind  to  their  fellows. 
Of  course,  it  still  remains  to  ask  how  far  back  this  condi- 
tion of  social  relationship  goes  in  the  life-series ;  whether 
they  are  only  present  after  the  human  species  appears 
with  its  tendency  to  establish  intelligent  social  co-opera- 
tion. This  depends  upon  the  kind  of  social  co-operation 
which  the  actual  reactions  shown  by  the  bashful  child 
would  indicate.  Upon  such  an  actual  examination  of  the 
reactions  involved  depends  also  the  question  as  to  the 
character  of  these  ancestral  social  relationships.  Apart 
from  the  details  of  fact,  however,  there  is  a  general  hy- 
pothesis which  seems  to  be  justified  by  this  phenomenon. 
It  is  this :  that  organic  bashfulness  is,  as  is  indicated  in 
the  quotation  above,  a  differentiation  of  animal  fear ; 1  and 
that  the  more  reflective  bashfulness  which  comes  only 
after  the  child  has  begun  to  have  a  notion  of  his  subjec- 
tive self,  is  a  reaction  of  anthropological  origin.  On  this 
view  the  organic  form  of  the  reaction  belongs  to  the 
animal  phylogeny,  and  the  reflective  form  is  a  further 

1  This  is  confirmed  by  Mosso's   interesting   researches  on  the  vasomotor 
changes  in  the  rabbit's  ear  during  slight  fear  and  excitement :  Mosso,  Fear. 


2OO  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

development  belonging  to  the  human  phylogeny ;  so  that 
both  sorts  of  recapitulation  cited  above  are  represented  in 
the  growth  of  the  child's  modesty  reactions.  The  phe- 
nomena of  blushing,  and  certain  other  physiological  ap- 
pearances, belong  in  both  of  these. 

131.  As  to  further  evidence  in  favour  of  this  position,  I 
may  cite :  First,  the  general  course  of  the  child's  develop- 
ment. Organic  bashfulness  appears  at  the  remarkably 
early  period  when  the  child  has  no  reflective  processes,  no 
emotions  due  to  ideas,  except  as  his  suggestions  confirm 
his  instinctive  reactions.  He  cannot  inhibit  his  bashful- 
ness,  nor  much  modify  it.  His  mental  part  is  below  the 
development  of  certain  of  the  animals.  Again,  the  details 
of  the  reactions  of  this  first  sort  of  bashfulness  are  strik- 
ingly similar  to  those  of  purely  instinctive  fear,  as  it  is 
shown  by  the  animals.  The  profoundly  organic  elements 
in  these  modifications  seem  to  require  that  their  origin  be 
as  far  back  in  the  life-series  as  the  indications  on  other 
grounds  will  allow  us  to  place  them. 

Second,  these  exhibitions  of  organic  bashfulness  are  modi- 
fied as  soon  as  the  later  development  of  self-consciousness 
brings  in  reflective  modesty.  The  characteristics  common 
to  this  reaction  and  to  fear  tend  to  disappear;  and  the 
child's  attitudes  become  mainly  a  mixture  of  fear,  hesita- 
tion, and  self-exhibition.  This  last  element,  seen  in  the 
child's  unwillingness  to  allow  himself  to  be  overlooked  by 
strangers,  is  in  striking  contrast  to  the  concealing  tenden- 
cies of  the  organic  period.  It  can  only  have  arisen,  it 
would  seem,  after  the  child  had  attained  some  more  or 
less  obscure  form  of  self-consciousness.  This  would  bring 
this  form  of  the  modesty  reaction  down  into  the  human 
epoch  in  race-history  ;  since  there  is  no  evidence  of  such  a 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  201 

sense,  except  in  the  most  rudimentary  form,1  in  any  of  the 
higher  animals.  These  higher  manifestations  of  modesty 
get  their  only  explanation  as  belonging  to  primitive  human 
society,  and  as  having  arisen  by  the  adaptation  of  the 
earlier  bashful  attitudes,  which  primitive  man  inherited 
to  the  requirements  of  more  complex  social  life.  This 
agrees  with  the  supposition  that  the  organic  form  of 
bashfulness  belongs  in  the  animal  phylogeny,  where  it  is 
mainly  the  reaction  of  fear. 

Third,  I  think  there  are  signs  of  organic  bashfulness  to 
be  found  in  certain  animals.  The  behaviour  of  a  dog  in 
the  presence  of  strange  dogs  appears  to  justify  this  opin- 
ion. When  the  dog  meets  an  unknown  dog,  he  shows  a 
general  disposition  to  be  cautious  ;  he  gets  ready  for  flight, 
but  still  does  not  fly ;  he  shows  an  incipient  fear-anger 
psychosis  by  the  raising  of  the  hair  of  his  neck,  the 
straightening  out  of  his  tail,  the  setting  of  his  ears  forward 
in  an  alert  way  —  all  attitudes  of  self-defence.2  And  with 
it  all,  there  is  a  set  of  tentative  manoeuvres  of  exploration, 

1  The  evidence  of  such  a  sense  is  usually  drawn  from  just  these  animal 
emotions :  pride,  jealousy,  etc.     And  in  estimating  it,  one  is  embarrassed  by 
the  question  as  to  how  much  of  these  may  be  instinctive.     In  a  paper  on  '  In- 
timations of  Self-consciousness  in  Animals,'  read  in  my  Seminary,  Dr.  C.  W. 
Hodge  concluded  that  we  must  allow  dogs  (*,§-.)  an  obscure  form  of  self-feel- 
ing.    That  a  dog  may  eject  something  of  his  own  mental  life  and  act  as  z/he 
'put  himself  in  another's  shoes,'  while  still  maintaining  his  own  self-sense, 
appears  in  the  following  case,  which  I  have  at  first  hand  from  Mrs.  Baldwin. 
Her  dog  Nero  was  accustomed  to  escape  from  the  yard  by  a  hole  under  the 
fence.     On  one  occasion  a  strange  dog  visited  him  and  was  shut  in  the  yard 
by  the  closing  of  the  gate.     Nero,  who  was  outside,  helped  him  to  get  out  by 
running  ahead  on  the  other  side  of  the  fence,  barking  vigorously,  and  looking 
back  to  see  that  the  other  dog  followed,  until  he  led  him  to  the  hole  through 
which  he  was  himself  accustomed  to  escape. 

2  Cf.   Darwin's  description  of  these  attitudes   in   the   dog.     Exp.  of  the 
Emotions. 


2O2  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

scenting,  advancing  and  retreating,  etc.,  which  are  very 
similar  to  some  of  the  indications  of  bashfulness  of  the 
child.  We  cannot  say  that  the  dog  is  waiting  to  see  what 
the  other  dog  thinks  of  him ;  that  would  be  to  make  of 
the  dog  a  man  ;  but  we  can  say  that  his  actions  may  be  a 
sort  of  race  equivalent  of  just  that.  And  as  soon  as  fair 
treatment,  or  a  show  of  respect  from  the  other  dog,  ap- 
pears, he  grows  affectionate  and  demonstrative.  This  is 
also  the  course  of  the  child.  Moreover,  the  signs  of  shame 
which  some  writers  have  observed  in  animals  are  to  be 
brought  under  this  class  of  reactions.  These  signs  are 
those  of  slinking  away,  attempting  to  hide,  random  move- 
ments with  a  good  deal  of  inhibition,  sinking  of  the  body 
toward  the  ground,  and  furtive  restlessness  of  gaze.  All 
these  things  are  present  also  in  the  child's  early  bashful- 
ness,  in  the  period  before  the  dawning  of  self-conscious- 
ness introduces  an  element  of  self-exhibition  into  the 
phenomenon. 

Fourth,  there  is  a  class  of  modesty  actions  associated 
with  the  sexual  relation  which  show  a  similar  likeness  to 
the  reactions  of  the  child.  It  is  evident  how  great  a  place 
this  kind  of  social  toleration  and  acquiescence  must  have 
had  in  animal  life.  The  oncoming  of  adolescence  had 
to  be  provided  for  in  the  hereditary  impulse ;  and  among 
the  actions  which  represent  social  life  in  general,  we 
should  expect  that  those  which  belong  to  this  relation 
would  be  prominent.  Now  the  phenomena  which  various 
writers  have  described  as  characteristic  of  animals  at  their 
mating,  will  be  found,  when  analyzed,  to  show  remarkable 
similarities  to  those  shown  by  the  bashful  child.1  What 

1  See  Groos'  detailed  descriptions  of  '  Courting  Plays '  and  the  bashfulness 
(Sfr'ddigkeif)  of  the  female,  especially  among  birds  (loe.  cit.,  pp.  243,  288). 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  203 

this  means  in  the  development  of  the  child  is  probably 
this  :  that  the  modesty  reactions  which  he  inherits  and 
which  he  finds  himself  performing  all  through  his  life,  are, 
in  a  measure,  those  which  the  sexual  relations  of  the 
earlier  forms  have  established,  and  which  his  own  adoles- 
cent period  will,  at  a  later  time,  bring  again  into  ac- 
tivity. That  the  general  phenomena  of  bashfulness,  in 
all  its  phases,  is  pronounced  and  unmistakable  in  what 
we  call  '  shyness '  as  the  period  of  adolescence  approaches 
in  the  youth,  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  The 
force  of  this  consideration  would  also  be  in  the  direction 
of  placing  the  organic  basis  of  bashfulness  and  shyness 
back  in  the  animal  epoch  of  evolution. 

These  indications  seem  to  me  sufficient  to  lead  us  to  the 
probability  that,  in  the  bashful  youth,  we  have  both  terms 
of  race-history  represented.  The  further  development  of 
the  modesty  reactions  of  the  individual  take  us  on  in  the 
history  of  social  humanity.  And  at  the  outset  I  may  say 
a  few  words  about  the  course  of  the  child's  progress  from 
a  bashful  babe  to  a  modest  man. 

132.  On  the  organic  side,  we  find  the  reactions  charac- 
teristic of  so-called  bashfulness  giving  way  to  those  which 
go  by  the  name  '  shyness,'  as  the  child  grows  up  into  the 
period  of  youth.  Shyness  is,  however,  more  particularly 
applied  to  mental  and  social  attitudes.  The  physical  signs 
of  shyness  are,  in  the  main,  a  lowering  of  the  eyes,  bowing 
of  the  head,  putting  of  the  hands  behind  the  back,  nervous 
fingering  of  the  clothing  or  twining  of  the  fingers  together, 
and  stammering,  with  some  incoherence  of  idea  as  expressed 
in  speech.  With  these  external  signs  comes  on  the  remark- 
able adult  sign  of  shyness  or  modesty,  —  blushing.  These 
physical  manifestations  seem  to  be  very  largely  survivals 


204  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

from  the  more  overpowering  bodily  expressions  of  the 
young  child's  bashfulness.  They  are  to  a  great  degree 
inhibited  by  the  habits  which  go  with  adult  self-control ; 
and  they  are  not  allowed  to  come  out  at  the  mere  triviali- 
ties of  social  intercourse  with  strangers,  as  the  child's  do. 
But  in  their  character  they  affect  the  same  members,  and 
the  occasion  of  their  display  is  the  same  in  kind.  It  is 
interesting,  also,  to  observe  in  those  whose  adult  shyness 
is  extreme,  as  it  sometimes  is,  how  really  childish  the 
phenomena  seem  to  an  on-looker.  Some  young  ladies,  in 
particular,  seem  to  be  quite  incapable  of  undergoing  an 
introduction  without  such  evident  display  of  what  we  call 
'  self-consciousness  '  that  the  meeting  is  embarrassing  on 
one  side  and  uncomfortable  on  the  other. 

More  positively,  the  appeal  may  be  made  to  the  sort  of 
emotional  consciousness  which  the  expressions  of  social 
embarrassment  carry  with  them  in  persons  of  sensitive 
social  temperament.1 

To  people  who  are  thus  constituted,  the  social  relation 
is,  purely  from  an  organic  point  of  view,  the  most  exhaust- 
ing, nerve-trying  relation  which  one  can  well  imagine.  It 
is  quite  impossible  to  keep  up  even  the  most  trivial  social 
contact,  such  as  travelling  with  an  acquaintance,  sitting 
or  walking  with  a  friend,  etc.,  without  soon  getting  in  a 
condition  of  such  nervous  strain  that,  unless  one  break 
the  relation  occasionally  to  be  alone,  even  the  '  yes '  and 
1  no '  of  conversation  becomes  a  task  of  tasks.  If,  how- 
ever, the  relation  involve  thought  of  an  objective  kind 
which  does  not  bring  the  social  relation  itself  forward, 

1  The  present  writer  has  been  himself  a  victim  of  a  very  sensitive  social 
sense  in  many  respects,  and  the  following  remarks  may  be  taken  as  giving 
in  great  part  his  own  experience. 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  205 

such  intercourse  is  most  exhilarating  and  enjoyable.  The 
finer  shades  of  emotional  effect  are  associated  with  in- 
creased rapidity  in  the  heart-beat,  some  slight  setting  of 
the  blood  to  the  head,  more  rapid  breathing,  a  general 
toning  up  of  the  muscular  system,  and  a  peculiar  static 
pressing  inwards  —  from  the  front  —  of  the  abdominal 
muscles.  This  is  accompanied,  on  the  mental  side,  with 
what  I  can  describe  only  as  a  'sense  of  other  persons.' 
This  '  sense  of  other  persons '  may  break  up  all  the  mental 
processes.  The  present  writer  cannot  think  the  same 
thoughts,  nor  follow  the  same  plan  of  action,  nor  control 
the  muscles  with  the  same  sufficiency,  nor  concentrate 
the  attention  with  the  same  directness,  nor,  in  fact,  do 
any  blessed  thing  as  well,  when  this  sense  of  the  presence 
of  others  is  upon  him.  But  there  are  other  peculiarly 
social,  i.e.,  conversational,  etc.,  functions  which  are  then  at 
their  best.1 

133.  Apart  from  these  more  hidden  organic  changes, 
the  one  general  effect  due  to  the  presence  of  other  persons 

1  At  the  same  time  there  is  an  extreme  form  of  this  social  sentiment,  when 
the  mental  processes  are  kept  strictly  objective,  which  amounts  to  a  sort  of 
exaltation  of  all  the  faculties  and  a  stimulus  to  success. 

The  only  way  that  I,  for  one,  can  undo  this  distressing  outgo  of  energy, 
and  release  these  uncomfortable  inhibitions,  is  to  expand  the  abdomen  out- 
wards by  a  strong  muscular  effort  and  at  the  same  time  breathe-in  as  deeply  as 
I  can.  But  even  the  process  of  doing  this  is  not  normal,  the  very  control  of 
these  muscles  being  in  some  degree  under  the  same  social  ban.  After  such  a 
siege  of  society,  one  must  seek  the  rest  of  absolute  solitude.  The  comparative 
relief  found  in  expanding  the  abdominal  muscles  is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that 
it  allows  the  contents  of  the  body  to  fall,  and  so  relieves  the  heart  from  any 
artificial  pressure  which  may  be  upon  it  from  the  surrounding  organs.  Further, 
the  increased  heart-action  which  is  itself  a  part  of  the  reaction  of  shyness, 
requires  all  the  space  it  can  get.  It  is  only  in  self-defence  that  such  a  person 
cultivates  social  coldness  and  indifference.  Two  recent  studies  of  these  effects 
are  'Morbid  Shyness,'  by  H.  Campbell,  Brit.  Med.  Journal,  Sept.  26,  1896, 
p.  805,  and  L.  Dugas'  '  La  Timidite'  in  Revue  Philosophique,  Dec.,  1896. 


206  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

is  that  of  blushing.  The  extent  of  the  blush  is  described 
by  Darwin  with  his  usual  thoroughness,  i.e.,  the  parts 
of  the  body  to  which  it  extends,  and  it  is  an  interesting 
fact  that  the  blush  proper  is  limited,  in  his  opinion,  largely 
to  the  surfaces  which  are  exposed  to  the  gaze  of  others, 
Appearing  mainly  on  the  face  and  neck.1  It  begins  in 
early  childhood,  about  the  time  when  we  may  say  with 
confidence  that  the  sense  of  self  is  moderately  well  devel- 
oped. I  have  seen  my  child  H.  blush  vividly  in  the  sixth 
year,  but  it  is  probably  to  be  observed  much  earlier. 

Blushing  is  a  general  modesty  reaction,  since  it  is  not 
limited  to  either  sex,  although  it  is  usually  stronger  and  less 
controllable  in  woman  than  in  man  (in  the  case  of  adults), 
and  it  is  not  due  exclusively  to  any  one  occasion  of  mod- 
esty. The  spheres  in  which  it  is  most  extreme  are  those 
which  involve  what  is  called  shame  in  all  its  varieties,  such 
as  is  caused  by  the  thought  of  physical  immodesty,  seen 
in  exposure  of  the  covered  parts  of  the  body,  by  sugges- 
tions of  personal  uncleanness  in  body  or  mind,  by  the 
most  distant  allusions  to  matters  of  the  sexual  relation,  or 
even  merely  to  persons  of  the  opposite  sex,  and  by  indeli- 
cate situations  of  any  kind. 

There  is  also  the  sphere  of  moral  ill-desert,  the  sug- 
gestion of  disapproval  or  even  lack  of  appreciation,  of  mis- 
taken inference,  or  harsh  judgments  ;  all  these  call  out 
the  blush  in  the  party  morally  judged,  provided  he  know 
that  this  opinion  is  entertained  of  him.  The  adverse 
judgment  of  others  is  sufficient  in  many  people  to  bring 

1  Mosso,  however,  thinks  the  blush  is  mure  diffused  and  is  only  the  striking 
instance  of  the  general  vasomotor  effect  seen  (in  his  experiments  on  animals) 
in  the  skin-vessels  generally.  Darwin  supposes  the  blush  to  be  due  to  '  atten- 
tion to  self  (£•*/>•  of  Emotion,  pp.  331  ff.),  and  his  discussion  of  the  vaso- 
motor effects  of  the  attention  is  still  one  of  the  best. 


207 

a  blush  even  though  there  be  nothing  to  justify  the  opin- 
ion ;  and  the  calmest  sense  of  being  right  is  often  not 
calm  enough  to  prevent  the  appearance  of  guilt  conveyed 
by  the  blush.  This  reaction  is,  however,  in  great  part 
a  transitory  one  in  the  development  of  the  individual. 
The  loss  of  bodily  sensitiveness  seems,  for  the  most  part, 
to  go  with  the  loss  of  moral  sensitiveness.  The  dulling  of 
the  social  sense  in  general,  as  seen  in  ethical  decay,  fre- 
quent violations  of  social  requirements,  and  habitual  relax- 
ation of  attitude  with  reference  to  the  claims  of  either 
physical  or  moral  propriety,  tends  to  make  the  reaction 
of  blushing  infrequent  and  unintense.  We  often  hear 
of  persons  who  have  'forgotten  how  to  blush.'  Yet  the 
blush  may  grow  more  and  more  vivid  as  the  social  sense 
grows  more  and  more  refined. 

Again,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  organic  process 
of  blushing  may  be  brought  about  simply  by  the  imagina- 
tion of  social  condemnation,  or  by  a  situation  of  real  de- 
merit in  which  there  is  no  witness  but  one's  own  self. 
Self-condemnation  may  bring  its  own  organic  result. 

134.  Coming  from  so  much  description  of  the  facts, 
both  physical  and  mental,  of  these  modesty  reactions, 
we  may  inquire  into  their  possible  construction  on  the 
evolution  hypothesis.  What  light  do  they  throw  on  the 
conditions  of  race-history,  either  in  its  animal  stage  or  in 
its  human  stage  ? 

As  to  the  meaning  of  these  signs,  it  seems  impossible  to 
think  that  they  could  have  arisen  in  the  course  of  the 
intercourse  of  man  with  man,  and  especially  of  man  with 
woman,  which  characterizes  peaceful  society.  The  sur- 
vival of  organic  effects  of  this  definite  and  persistent  kind 
must  have  had  some  profound  justification  which  the  his- 


208  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

tory  of  civilized  man's  dealings  with  one  another  does  not 
disclose. 

Assuming  the  correctness  of  the  position  taken  above 
—  that  bashfulness  is  a  differentiation  of  fear,  the  fear  of 
persons  present  in  ruder  family  or  tribal  relationships  — 
and  that  bashfulness  also  has  a  strong  ingredient  of  the 
reactions  of  mating,  we  may  find  in  these  points  sugges- 
tions to  carry  further.  I  think  that  the  differences  be- 
tween the  organic  effects  of  bashfulness  and  those  of  the 
higher  modesty  reactions  are  to  be  accounted  for  as  modi- 
fications due  to  the  further  social  relations  which  were 
imposed,  in  the  progress  of  evolution,  upon  these  con- 
stant elements.  Man  continued  to  fear  when  there  was 
occasion  for  fear,  as  also  does  the  child.  Man  of  course 
continued  to  mate;  but  certain  regulations  of  his  mating 
were  established  in  his  social  progress.  All  these  profita- 
ble variations  became  engrained  in  his  nervous  constitu- 
tion, and  so  tended  to  modify  the  simpler  characteristic 
exhibitions.  The  general  meaning  of  this  may  now  be 
indicated,  as  far  as  we  have  ground  for  thinking  that  we 
can  make  it  out. 

135.  Certain  general  bearings  of  the  facts  may  be  set 
forth  before  we  attempt  to  give  more  detailed  inferences. 

i.  The  inclusion  of  the  moral  emotions  in  the  class  of 
mental  experiences  which  call  out  such  organic  reflexes  as 
blushing,1  shows  that  these  emotions  are  of  social  origin, 
and  have  arisen  in  the  same  movement  with  the  other  fac- 
tors of  this  entire  group  of  effects.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  ethical  sense  is  a  growth.  The  reconstruction  by 

1  The  sameness  of  expression  of  the  more  refined  with  the  coarser  emotions 
has  been  noticed  before,  and  it  has  been  discussed  from  an  evolution  point  of 
view  by  Schneider,  Thieriuhe  ll'ille,  p.  1 20. 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  209 

the  child,  in  his  own  experience,  of  the  social  relationships 
through  which  his  sense  of  self  gets  its  discipline  and  clari- 
fication, makes  him  ethical.  The  discovery,  therefore,  that 
the  organic  reactions  to  ethical  relationships  are  included  in 
those  of  the  social  generally,  shows  that  the  plan  of  race  ac- 
quisition of  the  ethical  sense  is  recapitulated,  in  its  great 
outlines,  at  least,  in  the  child.  I  find  it  impossible  to  see,  if 
we  assume  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the  origin  of  emotional 
attitudes  and  expressions,  why  the  class  of  emotions  which 
we  cover  by  the  term  '  shame '  should  be  cut  in  two,  and 
those  which  are  simply  social  should  be  said  to  have  grown 
up  in  race-history  in  union  with  their  expression,  while  the 
other  half,  those  which  are  called  ethical,  although  show- 
ing the  same  organic  reactions,  should  be  supposed  to  have 
acquired  their  connection  with  the  organism  in  some  extra- 
evolutionary  way.  This  agreement,  in  fact,  in  the  expres- 
sions of  the  ethical  and  social,  taken  with  the  social  rise  of 
the  ethical  emotions  in  the  child,  furnishes,  to  my  mind,  a 
twofold  and  irresistible  proof  of  the  evolution  of  the  ethical  • 
sentiments  in  race  history.  No  other  theory  seems  to  ex- 
plain the  blush  of  moral  shame. 

136.  2.  These  reactions  point  to  conditions  of  actual 
and  active  personal  relationship  in  which  they  were  of 
utility  to  the  individual  or  the  species.  It  is  evident  that 
they  are  less  useful  than  damaging  in  our  present  society. 
By  the  blush  the  criminal  only  betrays  himself ;  by  agita- 
tion the  lover  makes  himself  weak.  The  act  of  indelicacy 
thus  carries  its  own  condemnation,  while  the  man  or 
woman  who  is  self-possessed  escapes  suspicion.  The  util- 
ity of  these  reactions  could  be  established,  therefore,  only 
for  a  society  in  which  the  physical  was  in  some  way  largely 
the  measure  of  social  efficiency,  and  the  rushing  of  blood 


2IO  His  Instincts  and  Emotion* 

to  the  head  gave  a  respite  or  a  resource  which  now  we  find 
in  the  'soft  answer  which  turneth  away  wrath,'  or  in  the 
deed  of  moral  restitution. 

We  are  forced,  if  this  be  true,  to  look  for  the  conditions 
in  which  these  reactions  had  active  and  effective  play, 
backward  in  the  history  of  man,  to  the  period  of  primitive 
culture  at  which  the  physical  was  the  main  social  weapon 
and  law.  Indeed,  anthropological  study  enables  us,  from 
the  object-lessons  which  we  still  have  from  primitive  com- 
munities, to  see  to  what  a  degree  the  meeting  of  a  fellow 
was  loaded  with  possibilities  of  danger  and  need  of  self- 
defence.  In  rude  societies,  the  women  are  often  matters 
of  strife  to  the  men,  and  the  contest  is  a  physical  one;1 
and  apart  from  the  distinction  of  sex,  with  the  causa  belli 
which  it  affords,  the  rivalry  of  clan,  the  personal  glory 
which  accrues  to  the  savage  warrior,  the  element  of 
treachery  which  makes  the  lone  individual  in  the  woods  or 
at  the  camp-fire  a  legitimate  victim, — all  these  things, 
which  are  most  critical  and  striking  factors  in  rudimentary 
social  life,  make  it  only  natural  that  the  association  of  man 
with  man  and  of  man  with  woman  should  leave  certain 
well-differentiated  effects  in  his  organism.  Nor  is  it  sur- 
prising that  these  effects  should  be  taken  up  and  perpetu- 
ated, in  less  gross  but  still  unmistakable  forms,  when  the 
personal  relationships  are  developed  in  the  more  subtle 
modes  which  we  call  ethical  and  social. 

137.  Allowing  these  two  general  statements  to  stand  as 
sufficiently  proved  by  the  fact  that  these  reactions  are 
what  they  are,  I  may  be  allowed  to  go  a  little  into  detail 
as  to  the  more  particular  elements  which  entered  into  the 

1  With  animals  this  is  true,  even  to  life-and-death  struggle  between  males. 
Cf.  Groos,  lot.  fit.,  pp.  130,  144 


social  conditions  of  the  environment  in  which  they  arose ; 
at  the  same  time  saying  that  these  details  are  matters 
of  my  own  personal  attempts  at  interpretation,  and  are  in 
so  far  more  liable  to  incur  criticism.  I  would  not  have 
them  endanger  the  two  general  statements,  however,  which 
are  made  above,  and  which  I  hold  are  well  proved,  pro- 
vided only  the  postulate  of  organic  evolution  be  accepted. 
At  the  same  time  the  points  which  follow  furnish  addi- 
tional illustration  and  evidence  for  these  two  main  con- 
clusions. 

i.  The  most  general  elements  in  the  organic  reactions 
of  modesty,  shame,  etc.,  are  certain  vasomotor  changes, 
with  inhibitions  and  confusions  of  muscular  movement. 
The  vasomotor  changes  —  seen  conspicuously  in  the  blush 
—  are  analogous  to  those  found  in  connection  with  other 
emotions,  notably  fear  and  anger.  If  we  say,  therefore, 
that  these  changes  are  rooted  in  conditions  of  personal 
experience  which  occasioned  fear  and  anger,  that  may  be 
our  starting-point  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  social  prog- 
ress which  these  reactions  stand  for.  And  the  conditions 
of  the  presence  of  these  vasomotor  and  muscular  changes 
may  be  assumed  to  be  those  of  fear  and  anger,  i.e.,  the 
strife  which  brought  on  physical  struggle,  involving 
excited  heart-action  and  strenuous  muscular  exertion. 
Readers  of  the  literature  of  emotional  expression  l  since 
Darwin  will  be  sufficiently  familiar  with  this  hypothesis 
and  the  grounds  on  which  it  rests.  These  considerations 
extend  to  both  the  aspects  which  we  have  found  attach- 

1  Cf.,  besides  Darwin  and  Spencer,  also  Mosso  (Fear),  Mantegazza 
(Physiognomy  and  Expression),  James  (Princ.  of  Psychology,  II.,  Chap. 
XXV.),  Dewey  (Psychol.  Review,  Nov.,  1894,  and  Jan.,  1895),  Baldwin 
{Mental  Development,  Chap.  VIII.). 


2 1 2  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

ing  to  the  modesty  reactions,  —  the  aspect  which  implicates 
the  sexual  relation,  and  that  which  pertains  to  personal 
defence  ;  the  former  factor  being  very  essentially  one  of 
high  motor  and  vasomotor  changes. 

138.  2.  The  beginning  of  differentiation  of  the  reac- 
tions of  fear  and  anger  in  the  direction  of  modesty  re- 
quires some  very  striking  cause.  Fear  has,  in  its  higher 
forms,  some  ingredient  of  self-insufficiency,  it  is  true ; 
after  the  idea  of  self  and  its  relation  to  an  alter  arises,  we 
have  ground  for  considerate  fear ;  but  physical  fear  has 
very  little  reference  to  self,  consisting  as  it  does  in  an 
overwhelming  sense  of  the  presence  of  the  fearful  object. 
The  same  is  true  of  anger ;  so  far  from  involving  any 
hesitation  or  retreat  through  considerations  of  personal 
lack  of  power,  worth,  etc.,  it  tends  in  quite  the  opposite 
direction.  Anger  means  precipitation  upon  the  offending 
thing.  The  consistent  development  of  these  forms  of  re- 
action, therefore,  in  the  progress  of  the  race  would  have 
been  in  the  direction  of  the  more  formidable  equipment  of 
the  individual  for  defence  and  offence,  with  the  eliminat- 
ing of  the  elements  which  tend  to  hesitation,  embarrass- 
ment, and  weakness.  So  we  must  look  for  some  modifying 
factors  in  the  environment  —  some  sufficient  reason  for 
the  development  of  these  reactions  in  the  direction  of  less 
personal  aggressiveness,  and  more  personal  dependence, 
which  we  find  they  have  actually  taken. 

139-  3-  This  modifying  influence  is  doubtless  to  be 
found  in  the  tendency  to  family  life,1  and  in  the  germinal 

1  Cf.  Westermarck  (I/islory  of  Human  Marriage,  Chap.  I.),  who  holds 
that  marriage  exists  among  animals  as  an  instinct  Hue  to  natural  selection,  its 
utility  being  the  raising  of  the  family  :  "  Marriage  is  rooted  in  family  rather 
than  family  in  marriage  "  (p.  22). 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  213 

beginnings  of  social  and  collective  action  which  we  see 
illustrated  1  in  some  degree  in  the  animal  kingdom.  The 
consideration  of  the  animal  family  is  itself  sufficient,  in 
my  opinion,  to  show  the  manner  of  pro-social  develop- 
ment. The  qualities  seen  in  the  animal  member-of-a- 
family  —  those  which  he  must  possess  in  order  to  make 
the  family  eligible  in  the  struggle  for  existence  —  involve 
two  factors.  First,  the  degree  of  self-seeking  or  aggressive 
tendency  which  avails  to  keep  selective  competition  sharp 
inside  and  outside  the  family  life ;  for  the  family  depends, 
for  its  food  and  drink,  upon  the  individual's  courage  and 
strength.  And  second,  the  development  of  the  co-operative 
tendency,  with  the  consequent  suppression  of  aggressive- 
ness, as  far  as  this  is  necessary  for  the  essential  family  rela- 
tionships and  for  united  action  in  the  competitions  which 
the  family  as  a  whole  has  to  wage.  These  two  opposite 
tendencies  must  be  reconciled;  and  the  development  of 
further  social  life  depends  upon  the  way  in  which  the 
organism  succeeds  in  reconciling  them.  The  gregarious 
instinct  must  exist  outside  the  family  also  alongside  of 
sufficient  aggressiveness.  Now  the  reactions  which  we 
are  studying  seem  to  me  to  be  the  survival  and  thus  the 
evidence  of  this  opposition,  as  I  may  go  on  to  explain. 

140.  4.  In  the  child's  bashful  period,  there  are  three 
epochs  or  stages :  first,  a  purely  organic  stage ;  second,  a 
free-and-easy  social  stage ;  and  third,  a  stage  in  which 
a  certain  '  self-exhibition '  seems  to  be  struggling  against 
the  organic  inhibitions  and  restraints.  These  periods  are 

1  Topinard  {Monist,  January,  1897)  ^as  recently  collected  evidence  to 
show  that  these  two  tendencies  do  not  always  go  together;  that  the  most 
gregarious  and  instinctively  '  social '  animals  are  often  those  of  least  developed 
family  life,  and  vite  versa. 


214  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

not  speculative,  but  real,  as  the  actual  study  of  children 
discloses.  The  last-named  period  is  the  beginning  of  real 
modesty,  and  involves  the  subjective  sense  which  we  call 
self-consciousness.  The  first  of  these  epochs  we  have 
already  identified  with  the  fear-anger  reactions  of  the 
animals,  together  with  their  sexual  commotion  ;  these  two 
things  at  least  and  in  the  main.  The  second  of  the  child's 
periods,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  represents  a  sort  of  organic 
resting-place,  with  the  degree  of  social  co-operation  which 
terminated  the  extreme  strife,  struggle,  hand-to-hand  con- 
flict required  by  the  purely  biological  operation  of  natural 
selection.  The  child  becomes  simple  in  his  confidence ; 
he  is  naive,  unsophisticated,  credulous  to  a  great  extreme. 
He  seems  to  me  then  to  have  his  parallel  in  the  rest 
which  man  took  after  his  release  from  the  animal ;  with 
his  dawning  sense  that  he  could  exist  without  killing 
and  being  killed,  with  his  discovery  of  the  arts  of  tilling 
the  soil  and  living,  for  some  of  his  meals  at  least,  on  vege- 
tables. The  social  tide  then  sets  in.  The  quiet  of  domes- 
tic union  and  reciprocal  service  comes  to  comfort  him,  and 
his  nomadic  and  agricultural  habits  are  formed.  He  lives 
longer  in  one  place,  begins  to  have  respect  for  the  rights 
of  property,  gives  and  takes  with  his  fellows  by  the  bar- 
gain rather  than  by  strife,  and  so  learns  to  believe,  trust, 
and  fulfil  the  belief  and  trust.  Looked  at  logically,  no 
less  than  historically,  this  is  to  me  quite  reasonable. 
The  early  ages  must  have  had,  sooner  or  later,  a  scene  like 
that  depicted  in  the  life  of  the  Hebrew  patriarchs,  when 
the  flocks  were  the  main  care,  and  the  wolves  were  the 
main  enemy  ;  when  the  hand  of  some  men  ceased  to  be 
against  every  man  ;  when  the  principle  first  came  to  take 
permanent  effect  in  the  consciousness  of  man  that  to 


215 

co-operate  was  rational,  and  to  fight  continually  was  not 
convenient  —  as  slow  as  this  principle  was  and  still  is  of 
recognition  beyond  certain  restricted  spheres,  and  as  un- 
supported as  it  was  by  any  effective  sanctions  but  those  of 
force. 

This  need  of  rest  from  strife,  on  the  part  of  the  race,  as 
an  introduction  to  the  occupations  of  peace,  would  seem 
to  be  testified  to  in  the  history  of  primitive  times  ;  and 
the  anthropologist  may  be  counted  on  to  give  the  asser- 
tion some  authority.1  I  have  already  pointed  out  (Sect. 
93)  the  function  of  play  as  aiding  such  a  growing  sense 
of  sociality.  Of  course  it  is  more  questionable  whether 
there  has  ever  been  any  such  period  over  the  whole  earth 
at  once.  It  may  be  in  order,  however,  to  say  that  the 
supposition  is  not  necessary  that  such  a  stage  was  real- 
ized in  the  entire  human  race  at  the  same  time.  The 
anthropologist  is  coming  to  put  less  and  less  stress  upon 
the  claim  that  certain  stages  must  be  reached  by  different 
families  or  groups  in  the  same  degree  at  the  same  time. 
Race  peculiarities,  as  far  as  they  exist  and  go  back  into 
prehistoric  times,  must  have  arisen  just  through  the  dif- 
ferences which  different  groups  showed  in  their  develop- 
ment under  different  geographical  and  historical  conditions. 
This  tribe  may  have  been  prevented  longer  than  that  from 
turning  to  the  arts  of  peace,  by  the  aridness  of  the  soil, 
by  the  prevalence  of  wild  beasts,  by  the  conditions  of  the 
seasons,  or  by  lack  of  useful  inventions.  Certain  other 


1  Of  course  its  confirmation  would  require  much  anthropological  research 
which  I  am  not  able  to  bring  to  it.  See  the  quotations,  regarding  this  well- 
recognized  period,  however,  in  Appendix  F.  May  this  declaration  of  the 
hypothetical  character  of  this  parallel  appease  thee,  learned  critic,  whose 
red-rag  instinct  is  keen  for  theory ! 


216  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

groups  may  have  had  to  come  into  social  co-operation  sooner 
in  order  to  subdue  nature  and  drain  the  soil ;  or  to  protect 
themselves  from  common  enemies.1  All  these  things, 
which  anthropology  is  far  from  understanding  in  any 
detail,  are  yet  clear  enough  to  make  it  necessary  that  we 
look  for  types  of  human  culture  realized  somewhere  rather 
than  for  the  realization  of  any  type  everywhere  at  once. 
The  cat  and  the  tiger  are  both  felines  and  both  represent 
types  of  feline  nature,  although  —  for  all  I  know  —  we  may 
not  be  able  to  say  that  there  was  a  time  when  either  alone 
existed.  The  tiger  may  be  alive  all  the  time,  and  yet  the 
requirement  may  be  real  that  there  should  also  exist  a 
feline  edition  so  mild  in  its  character  as  to  be  capable  of 
domestication. 

Saying,  then,  that  there  has  been  such  an  epoch  of 
transition  between  the  lower  man  who  does  not  reflect,  and 
the  social  agent  who  does,  this  epoch  would  seem  to  be 
represented  well  by  that  period  of  trustful  sociability  and 
unreflecting  credulity  which  lies  between  the  organic  fears 
and  tears  of  the  child  and  his  self-conscious  shyness  and 
modesty. 

141.  It  may  be  well  at  this  point  to  designate  the  two 
periods  in  race  progress  which  we  have  so  far  distinguished ; 
and  I  know  of  no  better  designations  for  them  than  these: 
first,  the  animal  period,  revealed  in  the  reactions  of  the 
child  which  are  mainly  organic,  we  may  call,  from  the  social 
point  of  view,  the  period  of  'instinctive  co-operation?  The 
second,  that  which  brought  in  the  reign  of  peaceful  pur- 

1  Indeed,  the  competition  of  groups  of  men  with  one  another  (called  above 
'social  selection  ';  Chap.  V.,  §  4)  was  doubtless  the  means  of  the  selection  of 
the  more  socially  endowed  tribes,  as,  for  example,  those  which  applied  the 
principle  of  division  of  labour  in  their  internal  economy. 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  217 

suits  and  the  beginning  of  widened  communal  interests, 
represented  in  the  child  by  the  frank  trustfulness  which 
succeeds  organic  bashfulness,  we  may  call  the  period  of 
'spontaneous  co-operation.'  The  word  'spontaneous'  is  con- 
trasted both  with  the  term  '  instinctive '  and  also  with  the 
term  '  reflective '  which  we  will  find  it  well  to  apply  to 
the  period  of  distinctively  intelligent  social  life  which 
arose  later  on  in  the  life  both  of  the  race  and  of  the  child. 
These  terms  apply  as  well  to  the  child  ;  better,  in  fact, 
than  any  other  descriptive  terms  which  I  think  of.  His 
social  attitudes  are  first  instinctive,  then  spontaneous,  and 
finally  reflective.1 

So  we  may  now  turn  to  the  third  or  '  reflective '  period 
in  the  development  of  both  child  and  race,  as  it  is  exhib- 
ited in  the  reactions  of  modesty. 

142.  5.  The  way  the  child  has  of  coming  to  be  reflec- 
tive is  simply  his  way  of  getting  his  notion  of  himself ; 
that  is  what  reflection  means,  the  distinguishing  of  the 
object,  the  alter,  the  not-self,  from  the  self,  and  then  the 
bringing  of  the  self  up  to  pass  judgment  upon  the  other. 
I  reflect  when  I,  the  ego  —  to  the  best  of  my  ability  to  be 
an  ego  or  self  —  turn  round  and  examine  something  in 

1  Of  these  sorts  of  co-operation,  the  '  instinctive '  belongs  to  animal  '  com- 
panies '  (Cf.  Appendix  D.) ;  the  '  spontaneous '  mainly  and  the  '  reflective ' 
almost  exclusively  to  human  '  societies.'  See  distinction  between  '  companies ' 
and  'societies'  below  in  Chap.  XII.  (Sect.  320).  I  use  the  word  'co-opera- 
tion '  rather  than  '  association,'  which  has  some  currency,  chiefly  because  of  the 
technical  meaning  which  the  latter  term  has  in  psychology.  '  Association  of 
ideas '  is  a  very  important  fact  in  the  psychology  of  '  co-operation '  and  two 
distinct  terms  seem  to  be  requisite  for  clearness.  '  Co-operation '  involves, 
besides,  some  degree  of  active  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  individuals  in  dis- 
tinction from  the  'association'  by  mere  herding,  so  common  in  the  animal 
world,  which  is  a  very  static  and  unfruitful  form  of  gregariousuess,  and  which 
in  the  human  mob  is  actually  destructive. 


218  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

my  consciousness ;  my  plans,  my  memories,  my  failures, 
my  hopes,  in  short  anything  which  I  can  represent  in  my 
consciousness  and  examine  more  or  less  coolly.  The 
progress  of  my  reflection  is  really  the  progress  of  my 
ability  to  hold  myself  together  as  an  independent  and 
critical  being  that  judges.1 

The  child's  progress  in  this  has  already  had  detailed 
attention.  We  understand  that  he  reaches  constantly  a 
self  of  his  own  by  understanding  others  better,  and  then 
understands  others  better  by  reason  of  his  interpretation 
of  them  in  terms  of  what  he  thinks  of  as  himself.  These 
two  poles  of  thought  constantly  occupy  him  ;  and  he  gets 
them  generalized  in  some  degree  in  what  was  called  in 
an  earlier  place  the  '  habitual '  self,  on  the  one  hand, 
over  against  the  '  imitative '  or  social  self,  on  the  other 
hand.  The  habitual  self  is  the  reckless,  bullying,  bragga- 
docio of  a  self;  and  the  imitative  self  is  the  docile,  teach- 
able, retiring  self.  Both  grow  up  together  by  the  very 
opposition  which  presupposes  them  both.  So  in  his 
inner  world  he  reproduces  the  actual  social  world,  and  fits 
himself  for  an  active  place  in  it. 

Now  the  indications  are  that  this  is  the  case  with  the 
progress  of  the  race.  The  elements  called  ego  and  alter  thus 
present  in  the  child's  consciousness  are  also  represented 
in  his  organic  reactions,  in  just  the  two  factors  which  we 
have  already  found  well  to  point  out :  the  fear,  anger,  self- 
defence  and  offence,  etc.,  inherited  from  the  instinctive 
period,  and  then  the  other  factor  due  to  the  peaceful 
learning  of  the  communal  lessons  in  co-operation  which 
come  down  from  the  period  of  'spontaneous'  social  life. 

1  Cf.  the  exposition  of  Bradley'*  description  of  the  self  of  reflection  in 
Appendix  E. 


Bashfulness  and  Modesty  219 

There  are  the  same  two  factors  in  the  individual's 
equipment  which  we  find  the  animal's  life  to  require : 
aggression  and  co-operation.  The  social  development  of 
the  child,  therefore,  shows  both  the  sorts  of  recapitula- 
tion which  we  should  expect ;  both  phylogenies  have  the 
periods  which  in  the  growth  of  the  child  we  have  called 
respectively  'instinctive'  and  'spontaneous.'  And  then, 
besides,  we  now  find  that  what  the  child  goes  on  to  be 
in  his  'reflective'  period  is  just  the  outcome  of  the  ten- 
dencies of  the  other  two.  Reflection  is  born  of  the  need 
of  getting  a  sort  of  accommodation  which  will  reconcile 
the  personally  aggressive  or  instinctive  with  the  person- 
ally imitative  or  spontaneous  ;  this  the  child  attains  by 
his  development  of  personality,  wherein  he  has  to  give, 
by  the  very  movement  of  his  own  growth,  due  value  to 
the  two  terms  which  lead  him  on,  —  the  ego  and  the  alter. 
So  the  race  had  to  reconcile  the  instinctive  tendencies 
which  came  down  from  the  animals  with  the  co-operative 
tendencies  which  social  life  prescribed  ;  and  it  was  done 
by  the  race  in  the  same  way  that  it  is  done  by  the  child: 
the  race  became  reflective,  intelligent,  and  so  started  on  a 
career  of  social  development  in  which  two  fundamental 
influences  were  to  work  together,  —  the  private  selfish  in- 
terest and  the  public  social  interest. 

This  leads  to  a  topic  which  is  of  so  great  importance 
in  the  further  development  of  the  meaning  of  social  life, 
as  this  book  conceives  it,1  that  I  shall  now  leave  its  fur- 
ther consideration  over  until  the  other  elements  of  equip- 
ment which  have  social  expression  have  also  been  ex- 
amined. It  is  an  interesting  question  to  ask  whether 
they — notably  sympathy  —  give  any  further  support  to 

1  The  topic  '  Sqcial  Progress';   see  Chap.  XIII.,  below. 


220  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

the  conclusions  to  which  the  reactions  of  modesty  have 
led  us. 

§  3.    Sympathy 

143.  The  consideration  of  sympathy  is  made  more  easy 
for  us  since  this  emotion  has  always  been  considered  a 
critical  phenomenon  for  ethical,  psychological,  and  socio- 
logical theory.  It  has  been  the  central  point  of  some  of 
the  most  stubborn  conflicts  in  the  history  of  ethics ;  con- 
flicts which  were  sometimes  remarkable  for  the  lack  of  the 
attitude  which  the  topic  discussed  would  seem  to  encour- 
age. And  when  we  come  really  to  see  how  pregnant 
with  meaning  sympathy  is,  we  are  not  at  a  loss  for  the 
explanation  of  the  fact  that  it  should  have  been  used  to 
support  this  view  of  man  or  that,  to  the  neglect  of  the 
sympathetic  consideration  of  opposing  views. 

These  discussions  of  sympathy  have  given  us,  indeed, 
a  fairly  clear  view  of  the  facts,  and  a  generally  adopted 
theory  up  to  a  certain  point  in  its  interpretation.  Psy- 
chologists are  generally  agreed  in  finding  a  distinction 
necessary  between  '  organic '  and  '  reflective  '  sympathy, 
similar  to  the  distinction  which  has  been  made  in  consider- 
ing modesty.  The  sympathy  which  the  infant  shows  when 
its  doll  bumps  its  head,  or  when  papa  puckers  up  his  face 
and  pretends  to  cry,  is  very  different  from  the  sympathy 
which  I  bestow  upon  the  wretch  in  the  slums,  or  upon  the 
widow  who  has  lost  her  only  son.  The  quick  appearance  of 
violent  organic  changes  in  the  child,  his  unreasoning  and 
indiscriminate  expressions  of  the  emotion,  the  passing  of 
it  as  soon  as  the  physical  expression  has  to  a  degree  sub- 
sided, the  lack  of  any  sufficient  mental  development,  at  the 
period  when  these  reactions  occur,  to  support  a  real  sym- 


Sympathy  221 

pathy  of  reflection, — all  these  indications  serve  to  justify 
the  opinion  that  we  are  dealing  in  the  former  case  with 
an  inherited  organic  manifestation.  This  is  further  made 
clear  by  the  fact  that  animals  give  very  remarkable  exhibi- 
tions of  this  sort  of  sympathy.  The  dog  will  howl  at  the 
calamity  of  his  master,  or  at  the  disaster  which  befalls  his 
fellow-dog  before  his  eyes ;  indeed,  the  phenomena  are  so 
well  known  and  so  much  discussed  by  a  humane  public, 
that  I  need  not  cite  evidence  which  may  be  found  in  any 
of  the  books  on  animal  psychology.  There  is,  then,  we 
may  safely  say,  an  organic  sympathy  as  well  as  a  reflective 
sympathy. 

144.  The  physical  manifestations  of  these  two  forms  of 
sympathy  are,  however,  again,  as  in  the  case  of  the  emo- 
tions already  cited,  the  same  in  kind.     The  expression  of 
sympathy  is  akin  to  that  of  suffering  in  general.    A  certain 
subdued  air  is  assumed   throughout  the  entire  muscular 
system,  the  corners  of  the  mouth  droop  even  to  the  ex- 
tent seen  in  weeping, — to  which,  indeed,  the  sympathetic 
feeling  sometimes  actually  brings  us,  —  the  movements  take 
on  a  general  attitude  as  of  proffering  help  to  the  individ- 
ual toward  whom  the  sympathy  is  directed,  and  the  voice 
reveals  the  peculiar  quality  characteristic  of   distress  in 
man  and  of  the  cries  of  suffering  in  animals.     The  young 
child  reveals  his  sympathy  by  at  once  falling  into  tears 
and  vocal  cries.     The  adult  either  bestirs  himself,  if  on 
reflection    he    judges    it   well    or   useful   to   yield   to   the 
promptings  of   sympathy,  or  sets  up  counter  movements 
of  restlessness  and  aimless  activity  in  order  to  relieve  the 
uncomfortable  tensions  which  his  sympathies  excite  in  his 
organic  and  muscular  systems. 

145.  The  meaning  of  sympathy  considered  as  a  race  re- 


222  His  Instincts  and  It  mot  ions 

action  is  reasonably  clear,  I  think,  and  it  falls  in  with  the 
inferences  which  we  have  already  drawn  respecting  mod- 
esty. Organic  sympathy,  being  too  early  in  the  child  for 
reflection,  and  being  also  present  in  the  animals  which 
give  no  sign  of  ability  to  reflect,  must  be  considered  as 
revealing  instinctive  reflexes  in  the  child.  Falling  thus 
in  the  period  which  goes  back  in  its  reference  to  animal 
ancestry,  it  gives  an  instance  of  recapitulation  from  the 
animal  series.  And  the  meaning  of  it  in  the  child,  ob- 
scured as  it  is  by  his  quick  development  in  other  and  char- 
acteristic human  directions,  is  the  same  as  in  the  animals. 
In  the  animal  family,  sympathy  is  largely  a  part  of  the 
family  instinct  as  such.  It  represents  the  extreme  of 
animal  blood-relationship ;  and  in  some  of  its  manifesta- 
tions is  among  the  most  extraordinary  phenomena  in  the 
whole  range  of  life.  For  example,  some  ferocious  animals, 
which  delight  in  drawing  blood,  will  nevertheless  discrimi- 
nate the  blood  of  members  of  their  own  species,  and  show 
subdued  and  sorrowful  attitudes. 

Carnivorous  animals  will  lick  the  blood  from  the  wounds 
of  their  companions,  with  every  expression  of  what  is  to 
us,  in  similar  circumstances,  gentle  pity  and  fellow-suffer- 
ing ;  thus  suppressing  those  more  ferocious  appetites  of 
their  nature  which  the  taste  of  blood  generally  excites. 
And  the  more  remarkable  is  it  since  other  animals  draw 
no  such  distinctions,  eating  their  own  kind  with  a  good 
appetite.  Indeed,  the  existence  of  cannibal  tribes  among 
men  serves  up  a  comparison  which  makes  it  allowable  to 
suggest  that,  in  going  back  to  animals  for  our  origin  we 
reach  a  nobler  lineage  possibly,  in  some  respects,  than  if 
we  had  stopped  short  of  it. 

The  human  cannibal,  however,  is  of  course  the  excep- 


Sympathy  2  23 

tion ;  and  he  may  represent  a  relatively  isolated  trend  of 
development  or  of  decay ;  at  any  rate,  his  presence  in  the 
world  does  not  stand  in  the  way  of  our  learning  the  lesson 
of  the  animal's  sympathy.  Even  the  cannibal  does  not 
eat  his  own  children,  nor  members  of  his  own  tribe.  They 
are  to  him  as  himself  just  as  the  whelps  of  the  mother-dog 
are  to  her  as  herself  ;  and  as  the  human  babe  is  to  his 
parents  as  themselves.  And  we  must  look  upon  the  sym- 
pathetic reactions  of  animals  —  and  by  analogy  those  of 
primitive  human  times  —  as  showing  the  extreme  form  of 
the  co-operating  tendency,  before  the  rise  of  the  reflective 
faculty. 

146.  Coming,  however,  to  the  reflective  form  of  sym- 
pathy which  the  child  so  soon  begins  to  show,  and  which, 
when  once  come,  is  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  saving 
elements  of  his  human  nature,  we  find  a  state  of  things 
strikingly  similar  to  that  depicted  in  connection  with  mod- 
esty and  shame.  Indeed,  the  facts  are  much  clearer  here, 
thanks  to  the  analyses  which  psychologists  and  moralists 
have  made.  The  rise  of  reflective  sympathy  is  clearly  a 
function  of  the  rise  of  the  notion  of  self.  As  we  have 
seen,  the  thought  of  the  ego,  and  the  thought  of  the  alter, 
having  the  same  presented  content  at  bottom,  excite  the 
same  emotion  in  kind ;  and  so  the  emotion  of  suffering, 
appeal,  joy,  rebellion,  etc.,  which  one  feels  for  himself 
must  be  aroused  also  when  the  same  thought  of  per- 
sonality comes  up  with  the  different  descriptive  term 
'another'  attached  to  it.  The  progress  of  the  child  in  get- 
ting the  antithesis  between  ego  and  alter  well  fixed,  and 
even  bodily  separated,  does  not  impair  this  necessity  of 
his  thought.  The  motor  processes  which  represent  the 
thought  of  self  must  be,  in  the  main,  the  same  whether  it 


224  H*5  Instincts  and  Emotions 

be  myself  or  yourself  to  which  a  particular  experience  re- 
fers ;  so  the  reactions  of  relief,  weeping,  rebellion,  subdued 
collapse,  etc.,  must  come  to  the  front  in  the  presence  of 
the  fate  of  others  no  less  than  when  the  victim  is  oneself. 
In  the  latter  case,  of  course,  the  actual  bodily  sensations 
of  present  surroundings,  or  the  actual  requirements  of 
consistency  in  my  thoughts,  memories,  local  escorts,  etc., 
may  be  amply  sufficient  to  prevent  me  from  making  a  mis- 
take in  my  identity,  and  thinking  the  suffering  is  really 
my  own  ;  but  even  that  is  liable  to  be  undone  in  cases  of 
high  sympathetic  excitement.  Sometimes  the  external, 
and  indeed  the  internal,  boundaries  between  you  and  me 
are  swept  away,  and  I  feel  your  calamity  really  as  my  own. 
This  tendency  is,  of  course,  the  source  of  the  emotions  of 
the  theatre,  where  every  premium  is  put  on  the  sort  of 
self-illusion  of  which  I  am  speaking.  And  in  certain  very 
frequent  and  persistent  cases  of  such  confusion  of  real 
suffering  and  fancied  or  historical  suffering,  we  have  to 
treat  the  patient  as  a  victim  of  an  abnormal  process  which, 
however,  in  its  root  and  value,  is  normal  sympathy. 

Reflective  sympathy,  therefore,  is  distinctly  a  social  out- 
come. It  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  growth  of  reflection  ; 
and  reflection  is  just  a  relation  of  separateness  created 
between  the  ego-self  and  the  object-self.  If  there  were 
no  alter  thought,  there  could  be  no  reflection,  and  with  it 
no  sympathy.  In  organic  sympathy,  the  relation  is  a  mat- 
ter of  organic  reaction  due  to  natural  selection,  we  may 
suppose;1  reflective  sympathy  reaffirms  the  social  value  of 
the  reaction,  utilizes  it,  and  in  discovering  the  relations  of 
persons  for  itself,  in  a  reflective  and  critical  way,  goes  on 
to  refine  the  reactions  and  embody  them  in  the  institutions 

1  Cf.  Appendix  D. 


Sympathy  225 

of  social  life.  Reflective  sympathy  comes  to  replace 
much  that  is,  in  its  earliest  foreshadowings,  biological  and 
merely  adaptive ;  and  through  it  the  laws  of  organic 
adaptation  get  a  turn  which  is  characteristic  of  a  rational 
order. 

Under  this  head,  finally,  reference  may  be  made  to  cer- 
tain other  emotional  states  which  have  more  or  less  value 
in  the  social  life  as  over  against  sympathy.  I  refer  to  the 
class  of  emotions  covered  by  the  words  'jealousy,'  'pride,' 
'  vanity,'  etc.  These  easily  fall  under  the  general  concep- 
tion of  a  developing  self  to  which  I  have  referred  the 
sympathies.  The  emotions  of  pride  attach  to  the  habitual, 
aggressive,  domineering  self,  and  are  of  importance  mainly 
as  illustrating  that  aspect  of  self-development.  There  are, 
however,  certain  social  facts  to  be  mentioned  later,  which 
make  it  well  to  refer  to  them  in  this  place. 

In  jealousy  we  seem  to  have  an  emotion  in  which  both 
the  resources  of  explanation  are  taxed  to  their  full  extent. 
Considering  reflective  jealousy  in  man,  we  should  say  that 
it  represented  a  certain  second  '  intension '  of  the  sense  of 
self,  a  double  reflection.  For  to  be  jealous  of  another  it  is 
not  alone  necessary  to  think  of  him  as  one  also  thinks  of 
oneself,  and  thus  to  be  thrown  into  the  attitude  which  char- 
acterizes sympathy;  this  does  not  go  far  enough.  There  is 
besides  the  further  consciousness  that  what  he  is  experi- 
encing is  different  from  what  the  self  is  experiencing,  and 
more  desirable.  This  is  possible  only  on  the  ground  of  a 
contrast  between  the  ego  and  alter  thoughts  as  marked  as 
is  the  identity  on  which  the  sympathetic  emotion  rests.  It 
may  therefore  be  described  as  a  state  of  sympathy  held  in 
check  and  overbalanced  by  the  egoistic  tendencies  aroused 
by  the  knowledge  of  the  cause  which  is  contributory  to  the 
Q 


226  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

other's  enjoyment.  This  on  the  side  of  the  higher  reflec- 
tive form  of  jealousy. 

We  should  be  led  to  think,  in  view  of  the  complexity  of 
this  state  of  mind,  that  it  could  hardly  be  found  in  the 
animals ;  yet  organic  jealousy  is  found  in  them  in  a 
remarkably  striking  degree.  Dogs  are  proverbially  jeal- 
ous of  one  another  and  even  of  other  animals  and  of  man. 
Yet  it  is  impossible  to  say  that  dogs  have  this  double 
play  of  attitudes  about  the  thought  of  self.  In  fact, 
the  existence  of  strong  jealousy  among  the  brutes  avails 
both  to  emphasize  the  two  sorts  of  emotional  expression, 
and  also  to  make  it  imperative  that  we  recognize  the  two 
principles  of  their  origin.  In  the  origin  of  organic  jealousy 
we  have  the  complex  but  direct  operation  of  natural  selec- 
tion. When  we  think  of  it,  we  see  that  such  an  instinct 
is  of  direct  utility  to  the  dog ;  for  it  stirs  him  to  throw 
himself  upon  his  rival,  and  by  overcoming  him  so  to  secure 
the  good  thing  which  was  his  rival's.  As  a  complication 
of  sympathy,  also  considered  as  instinctive  in  the  animals, 
this  is  what  would  seem  to  be  a  necessary  outcome  of  the 
law  of  utility ;  for  the  dog  whose  sympathies  for  another 
had  no  such  modification  would  stand  by  and  perish  while 
others  lived  whenever  the  competition  for  food  was  sharp. 
His  delight  would  be  to  see  others  eat !  The  organic 
emotion  of  jealousy,  therefore,  would  seem  to  be  a  biological 
outcome,  serving  in  the  animal  something  the  place  of  the 
reflective  egoism  seen  in  the  higher  jealousy  of  man. 

The  general  result,  therefore,  in  so  far  confirms  our 
earlier  conclusions.  Sympathy  reactions  run  continuously 
up  from  animal  organic  utility  adaptations,  to  the  uses  of 
reflective  social  life ;  and  so  furnish  additional  evidence 
that  the  highest  sphere  of  our  emotional  nature  is  not 


Social  Emotion  as  Such  227 

separated  by  a  gap  from  the  more  modest  social  beginnings 
of  lower  life-orders.  The  child  passes  with  no  rude  shock 
—  indeed,  he  never  knows  the  transition  —  from  organic 
to  reflective  sociality ;  and  the  presence  of  the  former 
ministers  to  the  latter  all  the  way  through,  just  as  the 
existence  of  the  former  at  the  start  makes  the  later  exist- 
ence of  the  latter  possible.  The  same  appears  also  in  the 
emotional  reactions  to  which  we  now  turn. 

§  4.    Social  Emotion  as  Such :  Personal  Opposition 

147.  The  place  of  emotion  in  the  mental  life,  and  the 
purpose  which  it  serves,  would  lead  us  to  expect  that,  after 
social  life  has  arisen  and  become  fixed,  there  would 
be  peculiar  forms  of  emotional  experience  springing  up 
about  the  relationships  and  adaptations  which  thus  become 
so  important  in  the  life  of  man.  Emotion  is,  by  common 
consent,  the  accompaniment  of  habitual  ways  of  action  on 
the  organic  side,  which  have  become  so  fixed  and  regular 
as  to  become  stereotyped  in  the  nervous  system.  Given, 
then,  so  constant  a  thing  as  the  social  rapport,  in  all 
its  meaning,  in  the  evolution  of  humanity,  and  it  would 
be  strange  if  there  did  not  arise  with  it  a  characteristic 
emotion  of  society  and  a  correspondingly  instinctive  way  of 
action.  There  are  two  classes  of  phenomena  generally 
recognized  as  thus  distinctly  social,  and  although,  from 
their  very  nature,  they  show  peculiarities  which  make  it 
difficult  to  classify  them  under  the  term  'emotion,'  used  in 
a  concrete  sense,  yet  the  remarks  which  follow  may  justify 
me,  I  trust,  in  bringing  them  forward  in  this  connection. 
One  of  them  is  the  class  of  phenomena  which  fall  under 
the  term  'suggestibility'  in  current  psychology,  and  the 


228  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

other  class  constitutes  the  sense  or  emotion  of  play.  These 
general  topics  are  already  in  part  familiar  to  us  from  the 
earlier  descriptions;  but  there  are  further  considerations 
to  be  made  out  in  the  present  connection. 

148.  I.  In  the  first  place,  we  may  inquire  into  the  facts 
concerning  social  'suggestibility.' 

The  literature  of  suggestion,  and  of  the  social  value  of 
suggestion,  is  becoming  adequate  in  recent  years ;  and, 
indeed,  the  treatment  of  this  topic  has  given  to  social 
psychology  its  most  respectable  showing.  The  writings  of 
Tarde,  Sighele,  Guyau,  Le  Bon,  and  others,  have  set  forth 
the  truth  that  society  is  at  certain  times  largely  a  mob 
ruled  by  suggestion  and  by  suggestion  only ;  and  that 
this  case  is  but  an  exaggeration  of  the  action  of  the 
working  of  suggestion  generally  in  the  social  relationships 
of  man.  Hypnotic  suggestion  has  furnished  important 
leading-strings  of  inquiry  which  have  been  followed  with 
interesting  results  ; 1  and  finally  the  conditions  of  the  child's 
development  have  been  shown  to  include  a  large  ingredient 
of  incitements  of  this  order.2  In  fact,  certain  sections  of 
the  foregoing  chapters  of  this  work  show  that  the  influence 
of  suggestion  in  the  individual's  progress  is  sufficiently 
great.  The  child's  personal  growth  is  not  only  constantly 
stimulated  by  those  suggestive  influences  which  we  have 
called  by  the  general  term  '  tradition ' ;  but  his  progress  is 
also  constantly  checked  by  the  same  system  of  influences. 
To  say  that  he  is  liable  to  suggestion  is  therefore  to  cover 
with  all-too-weak  a  word  what  is  indeed  the  very  method 
of  his  advancing  life.  Looking  broadly  at  the  child's  ways 
of  action,  we  find  that  social  give-and-take  becomes  a  habit 

1  Yet  both  Tarde  and  Royce  make  perhaps  too  much  of  this. 
*  Baldwin,  Menial  Da>elopmentt  Chap.  VI. 


Social  Emotion  as  Such  229 

to  him,  its  indulgence  a  means  of  great  enjoyment,  and 
the  denial  of  it,  through  isolation,  a  source  of  intolerable 
discomfort,  irritation,  and  rebellion.  The  anticipation  of 
it  is  again  a  constant  element  in  his  thought  of  the  worth 
of  life  and  its  distinction. 

The  social  circle  of  a  man,  too,  is  the  part  of  his  environ- 
ment which  arouses  in  him,  even  when  he  does  not  actively 
think  of  it,  the  most  profound  responses  of  his  personal 
nature.  And  when  he  does  think  of  it,  it  appeals  io  his 
highest  sentiments  of  self-respect,  dignity,  and  ideal  activity, 
or  the  reverse.  These  subjective  aspects  of  the  social 
life  have  never  been  named  as  have  the  emotions  which 
carry  distinct  organic  reactions  with  them,  for  the  reasons 
that  they  are  so  varied  in  their  effects  in  the  mental  life, 
and  that  they  have  no  precise  physical  accompaniments. 
The  nearest  that  one  may  come  to  a  classification  of  them 
in  psychological  language  is  perhaps  to  put  them  under  the 
two  headings  of  '  Imitation  '  —  covering  all  the  phenomena 
of  social  contagion  and  atmosphere,  satisfaction  with  conven- 
tion, conformity  to  style,  custom,  etc.,  —  and  'Opposition/1 
using  this  latter  word  in  its  widest  sense,  as  covering  all 
tendency  to  revolution,  all  resistance  to  convention,  all 
social  obstinacy,  love  of  innovation,  etc. 

The  two  opposed  aspects  thus  made  out  cover  the 
antithesis  between  the  '  conservative  '  and  '  radical '  ten- 
dencies ;  and  yet,  as  we  will  see,  the  present  distinction 
is  a  somewhat  different  one,  since  the  extreme  of  social 
suggestibility  extends  to  novelties  as  well  as  to  the  estab- 

1  Since  the  text  was  written  (and  too  late  to  be  available  to  me)  M.  Tarde 
has  published  a  work  on  'Opposition'  which  deals  with  facts  and  laws  con- 
trasted with  those  of  '  Imitation.'  The  term  '  opposition '  may  well  be  given 
this  technical  meaning  in  social  science. 


230  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

lished  usages  of  society  ;  and  the  extreme  of  opposition,  as 
used  in  this  connection,  goes  so  far  as  to  lead  to  personal 
revolt  as  a  habit,  no  less  against  what  is  established  than 
against  the  newer  courses  of  current  suggestion.  Both  of 
these  aspects  represent  constant  and  marked  phenomena, 
which  rise  to  a  certain  dignity.  The  former  was  called 
'  plastic  imitation  '  in  my  other  book,1  —  the  tendency  sim- 
ply to  yield  to  the  impulse  or  emotion  of  conformity  to 
social.usage, —  and  it  is  under  that  phrase  that  I  shall  con- 
sider some  of  its  phases  after  the  brief  remarks  which  fol- 
low on  '  opposition.' 

149.  The  phenomena  of  opposition  show  themselves  on 
the  side  of  the  individual's  independence  and  self-suffi- 
ciency, as  the  phenomena  of  mob-action  show  themselves 
on  the  side  of  his  sociality.  Yet  the  former  spring  out  of 
the  same  general  movement  of  the  personal  sense  as  do 
the  latter.  There  are  certain  phases  of  his  growth  which 
appear  as  more  or  less  striking  oppositions ;  and  these  I 
shall  point  out.  They  fall,  however,  under  the  less  impor- 
tant and  more  incidental  items  in  the  inventory  of  social 
happenings,  as  the  full  consideration  of  the  oppositions 
which  may  arise  between  the  individual  and  society  will 
make  more  evident  in  a  later  chapter.2 

(i)  In  the  child's  'contrary  suggestion'  we  have  a  very 
early  exhibition  of  social  opposition.  I  have  elsewhere 
pointed  out  that  this  sort  of  suggestion  arises  either 
through  the  association  of  ideas,  together  with  certain 


1  Mental  Development,  Chap.  XII.,  §  2.  Plastic  in  view  of  the  mobile 
condition  of  the  crowd  under  a  strong  suggestion.  No  other  term  has  been 
proposed  for  it,  so  far  as  I  know. 

9  On  social  sanctions  (Chap.  X.),  where  intellectual  and  moral  conflicts  are 
dwelt  upon. 


Social  Emotion  as  Such  231 

possibilities  of  muscular  antagonism ;  or  through  an  actual 
tendency  to  the  emphasis  of  the  personal  as  such  in  the 
mind  of  the  child.  As  to  the  first  it  may  be  passed  over, 
seeing  that  it  itself  'passes  over'  very  soon  in  the  progress 
of  the  child.  The  latter  reason  for  his  contrariness,  how- 
ever, leads  us  to  a  second  and  more  important  aspect  of 
opposition. 

(2)  The  child's  growing  sense  of  self  becomes  subjec- 
tive mainly  thfough  his  experience  of  agency,  volition. 
This  has  been  fully  explained  above.  It  is  this  sense  of 
growing  agency,  power  to  work  effects  for  himself,  which 
urges  him  on  in  a  career  of  relatively  competent  and  fruit- 
ful invention.  Now  to  the  degree  in  which  this  is  indulged, 
encouraged,  or  even,  in  some  children,  merely  allowed 
to  grow,  it  leads  the  little  agent  into  a  sturdy  indepen- 
dence which  shows  itself  as  social  opposition.  He  rejoices 
in  the  '  self  of  aggression  '  which  legislates  for  others. 
In  the  words  of  a  correspondent,1  "  One  of  the  great  psy- 
chologically potent  purposes  of  social  life  is  the  purpose  to 
find  the  self  different  from  any  other  self."  This  is  per- 
haps rather  strong ;  but  that  the  '  purpose '  is  a  real  one 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  We  see  it  in  the  attributes  of 
character  so  much  treasured  under  the  terms  'individuality,' 
'personal  pride,'  'self-respect,'  'private  judgment,'  etc.2 

1  Professor  Royce. 

2  See  also  remarks  made  above  (Sect.  75).     "We  find  volition  brought 
out  on  occasion  of  imitation,  a  higher  kind  of  imitation  called  '  persistent,' 
in  which  the  child  does  not  rest  content  with  the  degree  of  success  his  old 
reactions  provide,  but  aims  '  to  try  again '  for  better  things.     Now  the  imi- 
tative instinct  itself  is  thus,  in  this  transition,  brought  to  the  bar,  and  vio- 
lated by  its  own  passage  into  volition.     In  volition,  the  agency  of  the  actor 
comes  to  instruct  him.     He  learns  his  power  to  resist  and  to  conquer,  as  well 
as  his  weakness  and  subjection  to  a  copy.     And  the  child   comes,  just  in 
this  conflict  between  imitation,  an  instinct,  and  suggestion,  an  innovation,  to 


232  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

(3)  There  is  yet  another  phase  of  social  opposition 
which  has  also  had  some  attention  in  our  earlier  pages :  it 
is  the  sense  of  social  esprit  de  corps  which  comes  to  attach 
to  the  circle  or  group  within  which  one's  social  conscious- 
ness grows  up.  The  common  self  of  my  group,  one 
thinks,  is  the  proper  common  self;  and  in  so  far  as  other 
societies  do  not  recognize  its  conventions  and  regulations, 
and  the  more  if  perchance  they  violate  its  essential  prin- 
ciples, they  are  wrong.  Their  '  socius '  is  a  mistaken  one  ; 
there  must  be  opposition  between  them  and  us.  There 
thus  arises  a  certain  rivalry  of  clan,  family,  nation,  with  a 
vehement  emphasis  upon  the  features  in  which  they  are 
not  at  one. 

In  all  these  cases  it  should  be  noted,  however,  that  we 
are  dealing  with  side-events,  so  to  speak,  by-products  to 
the  main  progress,  whether  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
group  to  whose  common  life  his  growth  contributes.  His 
imitative  growth  is  the  necessary  basis  of  all  these  oppo- 
sitions. And  in  so  far  as  the  one  is  essential  —  the  imita- 
tion—  the  other  is  non-essential.  The  main  function  of 
such  oppositions,  in  the  progress  of  society  as  in  that  of 
the  individual,  is  that  of  keeping  alive  the  sense  of  indi- 
viduality, of  leading  to  strenuousness  of  purpose  and  en- 
deavour on  the  part  of  individuals,  with  a  consequent 
enriching  of  the  store  of  imitable  materials  through  inven- 

break  through  and  make  himself  an  inventor  and  a  free  agent.  In  fact,  we 
have  found  a  type  of  action  realized  in  the  phrase  'contrary'  or  '  wayward  ' 
suggestion,  in  which  just  this  revolt  becomes  a  way  of  action.  The  boy  won't 
imitate.  This  simply  means  that  he  won't  imitate  what  other  people  ask  him 
to,  but  prefers  to  imitate  what  he  asks  himself  to.  He  imitates  just  the  same, 
of  course.  But  the  difference  is  world  wide.  A  '  contrary '  boy  has  learned 
the  lesson  of  volition,  has  passed  from  suggestion  to  conduct,  has  mounted 
from  the  second  to  the  third  level,  and  is  available  for  genius-material "  (Bald* 
win,  Mental  Development,  pp.  430  f.). 


Social  Emotion  as  Such  233 

tion.     It  also  leads  to  experimentation,  and  to  a  testing  of 
rival  schemes  which  forwards  the  growth  of  the  fit.1 

150.  As  to  the  facts  of  plastic  imitation,  they  are  so 
marked,  and  so  commonly  observed,  that  I  shall  be  content 
to  name  certain  of  the  more  remarkable  instances ;  and 
then  refer  to  the  writers  who  have  treated  them  in  detail. 
One  great  sphere  is  that  of  what  is  called  '  style '  in  mat- 
ters of  dress,  methods  of  domestic  usage,  arrangements  for 
social  functions  —  such  as  calling,  announcements  of  en- 
gagements, marriage  cards,  funeral  customs,  etc.,  in  short 
all  the  affairs  of  our  external  social  lives  in  which  we  ask 


1  The  discussion  of  Social  Progress,  in  Chap.  XIII.  below,  makes  due  rec- 
ognition of  this  constant  inventiveness,  and  of  its  necessity  for  social  progress. 
A  view  which  seems  to  make  much  more  of  opposition  of  this  emotional  type 
than  I  find  myself  able  to  do  is  indicated  in  the  letter  of  Professor  Royce  just 
referred  to,  which  I  take  pleasure  in  quoting  here :  — 

"  I  think  that  there  is  here  one  very  general  factor  neglected  which  de- 
serves more  study.  One  great  region  of  social  functioning  consists  in  deliber- 
ately producing  what  I  have  called  '  social  contrast  effects.'  Questioning, 
criticism,  social  obstinacy,  gossip  about  one's  neighbours,  opposition,  repartee, 
the  social  game  of  the  sexes,  in  all  its  deliberate  forms,  —  these  are  functions 
whose  conscious  purpose  is,  not  to  reduce  to  unity,  not  to  decrease  varieties,  but 
to  find,  to  bring  out,  and  to  dwell  upon  the  differences  amongst  selves.  Such 
functions  make  up  a  fair  half  of  social  conscious  life.  They  obscure,  for  most 
people,  the  imitative  elements  actually  so  universal,  so  that  to  most  people  the 
discovery  of  the  universality  of  imitation  comes  as  a  surprise,  like  the  surprise 
of  learning  that  one  has  always  been  talking  prose.  Well,  as  I  notice,  a 
great  deal  of  an  individual's  inventiveness  is  a  function  due  to  the  appearance 
of  social  contrast  effects.  Light  up  my  conscious  contents  by  some  new  con- 
trast with  the  ideas  of  another,  and  I  see,  in  myself,  what  I  never  saw  before, 
and  now  I  have  '  a  new  idea.' 

"  One  of  the  great,  psychologically  potent  purposes  of  social  life  is  the  pur- 
pose to  find  the  self  different  from  any  other  self.  The  purpose  is  often  vain, 
and  its  conscious  expressions  are  full  of  illusions  amusing  to  the  on-looker,  but 
of  all  grades  of  social  organization,  from  the  children  in  the  market  place  to 
the  nations  stubbornly  holding  aloof  from  one  another  prating  of  glory,  and 
levying  tariffs,  one  could  assert  with  a  force  almost  equal  to  that  of  Tarde's 
definition,  that :  Society  is  a  mutual  display  of  mental  contrasts." 


234  His  Instincts  and  h 'motions 

'What  is  the  proper  thing?'  before  we  take  action  at  all. 
The  man  who  is  in  style  illustrates  plastic  imitation.  He 
shows  a  certain  sensitiveness  to  the  more  trivial  expres- 
sions of  social  judgment  which  may  be  passed  upon  him. 
All  this  is  a  matter  of  imitation  ;  for  only  in  the  great  out- 
lines can  these  social  arrangements  be  said  to  be  deliber- 
ate. For  the  most  part,  and  in  matters  of  detail,  they 
are  conventions  which  have  sprung  up  by  accident  or  by 
the  suggestion  of  some  social  leader,  and  have  been  estab- 
lished through  the  tendency  to  conformity  which  character- 
izes the  average  social  man.  The  same  tendency  extends 
also  to  the  intellectual  life.  There  is  in  every  community 
and  in  every  age  a  style  of  thinking,  a  general  preference 
for  this  sort  of  topic  or  that,  which  is  a  matter  largely  of 
social  suggestion  and  imitation.  This  may  extend  only  to 
the  lighter  things  of  the  mind,  in  which  the  newspaper 
press  leads  the  style ;  or  it  may  be  discerned  as  a  deeper 
current  in  the  history  of  literature  and  of  human  thought. 
Great  ideas  sometimes  sweep  suddenly  over  a  people ;  ideas 
which  had  lain  dormant  for  long  periods,  simply  because 
no  leader  in  the  intellectual  world  had  taken  them  up 
and  made  them  the  'style.'  M.  Tarde  has  attempted  to 
state  the  laws  of  these  movements,  and  I  may  refer  to 
his  book  for  many  details.1 

In  the  emotional  life  the  same  sort  of  thing  is  seen  in 
what  is  called  the  'contagion'  of  feeling.  An  emotion 
may  sweep  through  a  gathering  of  people  with  a  strength 
altogether  out  of  proportion  to  the  occasion  of  it  in  the  indi- 
vidual's ordinary  thought  or  life.  Sighele  has  set  this  forth 
with  much  richness  of  illustration,2  and  a  recent  writer  has 
attempted  to  work  out  a  calculus  of  the  effects  upon  an 

1  Tarde,  Let  Lois  dt  r Imitation.  *  Sighele,  IM  Foule  crimjnellt. 


Theory  of  Mob-Action  235 

individual  in  a  crowd  of  all  the  suggestions  which  he  gets 
from  the  emotional  and  vocal  expressions  of  the  other 
members  of  the  crowd.  Le  Bon  1  has  also  recently  depicted 
very  vividly  the  ways  of  action  of  mobs  under  the  sort  of 
social  suggestion  which  enchains  them  to  the  pursuit  of 
the  one  ear-catching  and  impulse-exciting  idea. 

§  5.    Theory  of  Mob-Action 

151.  With  such  adequate  portrayals  before  us  in  the  lit- 
erature of  the  topic,  we  may  go  on  to  find  the  place  of  this 
class  of  phenomena  in  the  theory  of  social  evolution.  In 
the  first  place,  it  may  be  well  to  say  with  some  emphasis 
that  the  attempt  to  build  a  fruitful  conception  of  society 
upon  the  actions  of  the  crowd  under  the  influence  of  these 
imitative  suggestions,  seems  to  be  crude  and  unphilosophi- 
cal  in  the  extreme.  If  the  reign  of  style  in  social  custom 
and  in  thought  and  feeling,  and  the  reign  of  suggestion  in 
the  crowd,  are  to  supply  the  data  for  the  formula  on  which 
the  movement  of  society  to-day  depends,  then  the  past  and 
future  movements  of  social  development  must  also  be 
explained  on  the  same  formula.  Water  cannot  rise  higher 
than  its  source.  If  mob-action  be  the  level  of  modern 
social  attainment,  then  the  mob  must  society  always  have 
been  and  the  mob  it  must  remain.  The  real  impelling 
forces  must  then  be  the  individuals  whose  law  or  caprice 
rules  the  mob. 

That  we  may  see  the  place  of  mob-action  in  the  social 
movement,  it  is  only  necessary  to  put  the  emotional  expe- 
riences which  the  individual  feels  when  in  the  presence  of 
strong  social  suggestion  alongside  the  rest  of  his  mental 

1  Le  Bon,  The  Crowd 


236  His  Instincts  ami  Ji  mo/ ions 

life,  and  ask  how  far  it  constitutes  a  permanent  element  in 
his  sane  activities,  or  even  in  the  social  activities  which 
have  become  crystallized  in  the  judgments  and  expectations 
of  his  time.  When  this  is  done,  it  is  at  once  seen  that 
these  plastic  influences  are  in  themselves  mere  spontanei- 
ties, except  so  far  as  they  get  support  from  the  deeper 
movements  of  the  social  environment,  or  represent  the 
deeper  movements  of  the  person's  mental  life.  Then  only 
do  they  get  vitality  ;  but  not  because  they  are  matters  of 
suggestion  in  the  crowd.  Their  value,  on  the  contrary, 
comes  from  the  fact  that  they  represent  forces  already 
operative.  I  am  disposed  to  say,  trying  to  put  the  real 
character  of  this  sort  of  social  suggestion  in  a  single  sen- 
tence, that  the  mind  of  a  crowd  is  essentially  a  temporary, 
unorganized,  and  ineffective  thing.  And  its  more  partic- 
ular characters  may  be  cited  to  show  this.  It  is  hardly 
worth  while  to  go  into  the  matter  except  that  such  a  social 
phenomenon  ought  to  be  explained,  and  that  the  school  of 
writers  referred  to  think  that  in  describing  the  mob  they  are 
solving  the  problems  of  social  life.  With  it,  we  may  hope 
to  get  light  on  the  subtler  phases  of  social  suggestion. 

The  characteristics  of  the  social  suggestions  upon  which 
the  crowd  act  show  them  to  be  strictly  suggestions.  They 
are  not  truths,  nor  arguments,  nor  insights,  nor  inventions. 
They  are  fragments  hit  off,  chips,  often  words  and  but 
words.  The  type  of  mental  process  which  is  required  for  the 
reception  of  these  missiles  of  the  mind  is  also  very  exactly 
characterized  by  the  word  'suggestibility.'  The  sugges- 
tible mind  has  very  well  known  marks.  Balzac  hit  off 
one  of  them  in  Eugenie  Grandet  in  the  question  :  '  Can  it 
be  that  collectively  man  has  no  memory  ? '  We  might 
go  through  the  list  of  mental  functions  asking  the  same 


Theory  of  Mob-Action  237 

question  of  them  one  by  one.  Has  man  collectively  no 
thought,  no  sense  of  values,  no  deliberation,  no  self-control, 
no  responsibility,  no  conscience,  no  will,  no  motive,  no 
purpose  ?  And  the  answer  to  each  such  question  would 
be  the  same  :  no,  he  has  none.  The  suggestible  conscious- 
ness is  the  consciousness  that  has  no  past,  no  future,  no 
height,  no  depth,  no  development,  no  reference  to  any- 
thing ;  it  has  only  in  and  out.  It  takes  in  and  it  acts  out 
—  that  is  all  there  is  to  it.  It  is  receptivity  gone  to  seed, 
and  action  gone  mad.  The  most  striking  things  about  it 
are  its  utter  thoughtlessness  and  its  extraordinarily  lively 
excitement.  A  meaningless  suggestion  to  a  crowd  may 
bring  an  outburst  of  emotion  and  action  which  sweeps 
away  some  of  the  landmarks  of  a  generation.  This,  again, 
has  been  set  forth  by  a  recent  writer,  M.  Le  Bon. 

The  real  question  is :  What  inferences  are  we  to 
draw  from  facts  which  show  that  the  most  irrational, 
capricious,  impulsive,  and  excess-loving  man  —  is  a  collec- 
tion of  men  ?  Can  it  be  true  that  these  phenomena  show 
either  the  origin  from  which  society  has  sprung,  as  some 
recent  writers  claim, — drawing  from  it  a  conclusion  fa- 
vourable to  individualism,  —  or  the  goal  to  which  society  is 
tending,  as  others  pitifully  cry,  in  justification  of  social 
pessimism  ?  Have  we  here  evidence  either  that  the  indi- 
vidual is  the  wisest  human  resource,  seeing  the  pitiful 
outcome  of  collective  action  of  this  type  ?  —  or  that  de- 
mocracy finds  its  fulfilment  in  social  confusion,  seeing 
the  omnipresence  of  the  mob  ? 

152.  Of  course  not,  we  reply  to  the  first  of  these  ques- 
tions. Social  suggestibility  could  not  be  the  original  form 
of  man's  life,  for  then  there  would  be  an  absolute  gulf  be- 
tween him  and  the  animal  world,  in  which  instinctive 


238  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

equipment  in  definite  directions  is  supreme.  Moreover, 
the  social  organization  we  already  have  would  have  been 
as  impossible  from  such  a  beginning  as  the  pessimists  fear 
it  will  be  when  such  a  condition  of  things  returns  in  the 
reign  of  pure  democracy.  The  mob  which  acts  to-day  and 
forgets  to-morrow,  kills  to-day  and  sighs  for  life  to-morrow, 
builds  to-day  and  destroys  to-morrow,  would  be  a  poor  stock 
in  trade  for  the  spirit  of  social  ideality  to  start  its  career 
of  progress  in  the  world  withal.  No,  therefore,  the  ata- 
vistic theory  of  social  suggestion  is  not  the  true  one ; 
the  mob  is  not  a  reversion  to  an  earlier  type  of  human 
life.1 

153.  To  the  other  view  nowadays  sometimes  urged, 
we  must  also  take  exception  just  as  decided.  The  phe- 
nomena of  social  suggestibility  are  not  the  key  to  the 
understanding  of  the  future,  in  the  sense  that  the  mob  is 
the  typical  and  controlling  social  force.  The  progress  of 
society  is  progress  in  education,  richness  of  tradition,  con- 
tinuity of  growth ;  these  are  quite  in  opposition  to  the 
impulsive  and  casually  explosive  activity  of  the  crowd. 
The  loss  of  identity  and  social  continence  on  the  part  of 
the  individual,  when  he  is  carried  away  by  a  popular  move- 
ment, is  well  struck  off  by  the  common  saying  that  such 
a  man  has  'lost  his  head."  That  is  true;  but  then  he 
regains  his  head  and  is  ashamed  that  he  lost  it.  His 
normal  place  in  society  is  determined  by  the  events  of 
that  part  of  his  life  in  which  he  keeps  his  head.  And 

1  It  cannot  be  said  to  represent  what  we  have  called  '  spontaneous '  social 
co-operation,  since  being  in  the  higher  reflective  epoch  it  has  all  the  re- 
sources, especially  for  destructive  action,  of  established  and  organized  society; 
and  more  especially  since  it  has  not  the  sturdy  characters  which  belong  to  the 
individuals  at  that  epoch.  The  tendency  to  '  contrary '  suggestion  and  indi- 
vidual '  opposition  '  are  quite  absent  from  the  mob. 


Theory  of  Mob- Action  239 

the  same  is  true  of  the  events  in  the  life  of  the  social 
group  as  a  whole. 

Such  theories  repose  upon  superficial  views  of  the  agen- 
cies at  work  in  the  moulding  and  developing  of  institu- 
tions. It  is  not  the  mob  —  whether  the  particular  mob 
be  a  lynching  party,  a  corn-riot,  a  commune,  a  Chamber  of 
Deputies,  or  a  Jingo  Senate  —  which  starts  or  directs  the 
fruitful  movements  of  a  time ;  to  say  that  would  be  to  re- 
verse the  connection  of  cause  and  effect.  The  real  forces 
at  work  are  heredity,  instinct,  tradition,  intelligence,  per- 
sonal power  in  particular  men,  etc.  These  are  the  causal 
agencies  which,  to  be  sure,  give  us  also  the  mob  and  the 
set  of  performances  which  must  undoubtedly  be  attributed 
to  it.  The  principle  of  suggestion,  which  seems  to  have 
application  in  this  field,  is  itself  responsible  for  so  much 
that  is  more  profound,  that  to  have  all  that  undone  at  the 
capricious  operation  of  the  same  principle  in  the  casual 
intercourse  of  crowds,  would  be  to  refute  our  knowledge 
with  our  ignorance. 

154.  With  so  much  attention  to  the  theories  which 
make  the  extremest  form  of  social  suggestion  and  incon- 
tinence massgebend  for  social  theory  as  such,  we  may  turn 
to  a  more  positive  examination  of  the  place  which  such 
phenomena  really  hold  in  human  life.  This  place  is 
clearly  that  of  a  Nebenconsequenz,  a  by-product,  an  inci- 
dental outcome  of  the  general  movement  which  bodies 
forth  the  progress  of  society. 

If,  as  has  been  said,  the  kind  of  temporary  suggestive 
consciousness  seen  in  the  mob  is  not  the  original  form, 
nor  the  final  form,  of  social  association,  then  it  must  lie 
somewhere  between  these  two  extremes  and  so  represent 
a  phase  of  social  development  itself.  What  this  phase  is, 


240  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

and  how  it  comes  to  be,  is  easily  seen.  The  emotion 
of  sociality,  like  all  other  emotions,  has  its  normal  kind  of 
excitant ;  and  when  this  is  present  in  extreme  degrees, 
the  emotional  movement  is  itself  liable  to  be  extreme. 
The  presence  of  persons  is  the  normal  social  excitant, 
and  the  extreme  degrees  of  social  influence  come  naturally 
over  a  man,  when  he  is  surrounded,  hedged  in,  embar- 
rassed in  his  thinking,  by  the  crowd.  A  man's  normal 
mental  life  may  be  paralyzed  by  over-stimulation  of  any 
kind.  Frighten  him  by  an  impending  physical  calamity, 
and  he  'loses  his  head ' ;  give  him  too  much  cause  for  joy, 
and  he  becomes  '  mad '  with  his  rejoicing ;  let  an  object 
of  envy,  jealousy,  hate,  remorse,  repentance,  occupy  his 
mind  too  intensely  or  too  singly,  and  his  deliberative 
processes,  his  memory,  his  resolution,  —  indeed,  all  those 
saner  aspects  of  his  mental  life  which  make  him  a  man, 
—  are  temporarily  impaired.  It  is  simply  a  case,  then,  of 
the  exaggeration  of  the  normal.  One  element  in  his 
make-up  gets  complete  control  of  the  man. 

The  sort  of  social  influence  which  a  crowd  exerts  upon 
the  single  member  of  it  is  precisely  the  same.  That  ordi- 
nary requirement  of  social  life — co-operation,  with  the  sus- 
pension of  private  interest  and  judgment  in  some  degree 
in  the  interest  of  a  broader  social  point  of  view  —  is  here 
enforced  ;  but  the  demand  made  is  extreme.  The  suspen- 
sion of  judgment  becomes  the  inhibition  of  personal  think- 
ing ;  the  co-operation  required  for  social  life  becomes  the 
frenzy  of  social  crime ;  the  deeds  of  the  individual  are  no 
longer  his,  but  the  crowd's.  So  the  whole  series  of  facts, 
which  are  indeed  so  remarkable,  may  be  explained  on  the 
view  which  treats  them  as  excesses  in  processes  upon 
which  the  very  soberness  and  sanity  of  social  man  ulti- 


Theory  of  Mob- Action  241 

mately  rest.  If  man  were  not  able  to  take  social  sug- 
gestions at  all,  he  would  live  alone  in  a  cave  and  shoot 
his  fellow-man  at  sight.  But  if  he  come  out  of  this  bondage 
to  individualism  into  the  promised  land  of  co-operation 
through  the  give-and-take  of  social  influence,  then  he  must 
be  prepared  for  the  waxing  growth  of  the  new  sense  which 
his  social  freedom  produces.  The  more  social  he  becomes, 
and  the  more  valuable  the  fruitage  of  his  co-operation, 
as  embodied  in  institutions,  the  more  danger  of  excess- 
discharges  in  the  new  channel  when  the  conditions  of 
stimulation  are  artificial,  and  the  more  safeguards  must  he 
erect  around  his  institutions,  to  protect  them  from  himself.1 
The  analogy  with  the  individual's  own  mind  is  an  in- 
structive one.  In  order  to  think,  one  must  have  a  certain 
impelling  emotional  trend,  a  certain  sufficient  interest,  a 
plan  to  which  he  feels  himself  committed  ;  but  these  very 
things,  the  emotive  aspect  of  thought  itself,  it  is  that  on 
occasion  dethrone  his  reason,  lead  him  to  the  extreme 
excesses  of  passion,  or  land  him  in  an  institution  for  the 
insane.  So  social  thinking,  the  normal  engine  of  progress 
both  in  the  creative  and  in  the  conservative  processes  of 
history,  must  have  the  sort  of  emotive  impulse  which  we 
call  social  suggestion  ;  but  to  it,  when  it  breaks  its  bounds 
and  becomes  a  purposeless  function,  history  owes  its  cata- 
clysms.2 

1  Sighele's  explanation  of  the  tendency  of  the  mob  to  action  of  a  low  type, 
is  that  a  sort  of  average  capacity  is  struck  among  all  the  individuals  (f.a 
Foule  criminelle,  p.  63).     But  if  that  were  true,  excess  in  crime  would  he  as 
rare  as  great  virtue  in  the  crowd. 

2  Interesting  cases  from  the  life  of  the  more  social  animals  might  be  cited, 
going  to  show  that  with  them  this  mass-action  is  a  departure  from  their  nor- 
mal life.     The  following  quotation  from  Hudson  apropos  of  the  violent  setting 
of  a  herd  upon  its  weak  members  lends  itself  to  our  view :  — 

"The  instinct  is,  then,  not  only  useless  but  actually  detrimental;   and,  this 

K 


242  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

155.  With  this  explanation  of  those  more  wild  and  un- 
bridled exhibitions  which  men  sometimes  make  of  them- 
selves when  acting  collectively,  we  may  see  also  the  reason 
for  the  more  partial  and  semi-reasonable  obsessions  which 
afflict  society.     The  social  tendency  to    be   undeliberate, 
enthusiastic,  to  put   up  with  the  novelty  which   is  most 
insistent  in  its  claim,  and  most  noisy  in  its  self-commen- 
dation—  this  tendency  is  easily  led  by  the  schemer  and 
agitator  in  our  midst,  whose  only  hope  of  a  following  is  a 
following  en  masse,  when  the  force  of  the  example  of  a  few 
satellites  carries  the  strength  of  overpowering  suggestion 
to  the  unthinking  crowd.     For  this  reason  the  practice  of 
demagoguery  is  much  older  than  the  theory  of  it.     And 
then,  besides,  there  are  always  lines  of   social    influence 
running  here  and  there  in  literature,  in  social  theory  itself, 
and  in  political  party  strife,  which  open  a  network  of  sug- 
gestions to  the  popular  mind.     All   these  things,  to  the 
degree  to  which  they  paralyze  the  individual's  judgment, 
stifle  his  thought,  or  appeal  to  his  intellectual  inertia,  are 
really  hypnotizing  suggestions  whose  effects  the  general 
character  of  social  life  itself,  with  its  openness  to  personal 
influences,  sufficiently  explains. 

156.  II.    Another  ingredient,  also,  of  the  social  emotion 
which  we  are  now  considering  is  to  be  found  in  the  play- 
instinct.     This  class  of  phenomena  has  been  characterized 

being  so,  the  action  of  the  herd  in  destroying  one  <>f  its  members,  is  not  even 
to  be  regarded  as  an  instinct  proper,  but  rather  as  an  aberration  of  an  instinct, 
a  blunder,  into  which  animals  sometimes  fall  when  excited  to  action  in  unusual 
circumstances.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  us  is  that  in  these  wild  abnormal 
movements  of  social  animals,  they  are  acting  in  violent  contradiction  to  the 
whole  tenor  of  their  lives  —  and  to  the  whole  body  of  their  instincts  and  habits 
which  have  made  it  possible  for  them  to  exist  together  in  communities." 
(Nat.  in  I*  Plata,  p.  340  f.) 


Theory  of  Mob- Action  243 

in  an  earlier  chapter,  and  their  value  in  the  early  life  of 
the  child  pointed  out.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  by  play  the 
child  not  only  gets  into  the  habit  of  being  social  in  the 
normal  ways  and  degrees  which  his  after  life  requires,  but 
he  learns  also  to  give  himself  up  to  the  social  spirit.  In 
games  there  is  the  exact  counterpart  oftentimes  of  the 
action  of  the  crowd.  The  imitative  impulse  is  developed 
under  the  lead  of  the  example  and  injunction  of  the  older 
and  more  domineering  children.  The  lesson  of  self-con- 
trol has  its  opposite  in  the  lesson  of  mass-action  and  spon- 
taneous suggestibility.  Any  one  who  watches  the  games 
of  a  set  of  boys  in  the  school-yard  or  in  the  streets  will  see 
that  it  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  moves  of  the  game  which 
are  provided  for  with  any  consistent  or  well-planned  plot 
or  scheme.  The  game  is  begun  and  then  becomes,  in 
great  measure,  the  carrying-out  of  a  series  of  cotips  et  contre- 
coups  on  the  part  of  the  leaders  among  the  players ;  the 
remainder  following  the  dictation  and  example  of  the  few. 
When  a  leader  whoops,  the  crowd  also  whoop ;  when  he 
fights,  they  fight.  All  this  social  practice  is  most  valuable 
as  discipline  in  serious  social  business ;  but  it  is  also  prep- 
aration for  the  excesses  of  social  emotion.  And  a  good 
deal  might  be  said,  I  think,  of  the  tendency  of  adults  to  be 
drawn  together  and  to  act  together  through  the  incitement 
of  gaming.1 

157.  Two  general  remarks  may  bring  this  topic  to  a 
close.  The  same  relation  which  subsists  between  law- 
abiding  and  socially  continent  action,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  explosive  action  of  the  mob,  on  the  other  hand,  also 

1  The  social  influence  of  gaming  should  be  brought  out  by  some  one 
writing  on  human  games ;  I  commend  it  to  the  distinguished  author  of  the 
forthcoming  work,  Die  Spiele  der  Afenschen. 


244  -Hi*  Instincts  and  Emotions 

subsists  in  the  impulses  of  the  individual.  One  may  sit  in 
an  auditorium,  as  the  present  writer  has  often  done,  during 
an  exciting  political  or  religious  harangue,  and  endeavour  to 
keep  himself  quite  cool  and  unresponsive.  He  will  then 
be  convinced  that  he  himself,  even  when  he  sets  himself 
to  be  rational,  is  still  a  creature  whose  social  suggestibil- 
ity goes  deeper  than  his  power  of  self-control.  He  feels, 
in  spite  of  himself,  and  in  the  face  of  his  great  impatience 
with  himself,  the  tide  of  social  excitement  rising  within 
him  ;  and  the  swelling  of  his  bosom  is  evidence  to  him 
that  there  might  be  an  orator  altogether  too  moving  for 
his  resistance.  He  feels  that  his  footing  is  his  only  so 
long  as  he  is  enough  alone  to  keep  his  thinking  processes 
unentangled  in  the  social  emotions  which  are  being  stirred 
up  around  him. 

Another  consideration,  apropos  of  this  general  topic, 
seems  of  some  importance.  It  is  that  the  relation  of  the 
two  tendencies  thus  found  in  the  individual,  and  in  every 
community,  may  vary  indefinitely  toward  the  excess  of  the 
one  factor  and  the  deficiency  of  the  other.  We  can  all 
point  to  individuals  whom  we  characterize  as  suggestible 
and  emotional.  They  are  quick  to  catch  a  suggestion,  a 
style,  an  opinion  ;  they  go  with  the  crowd  ;  they  are  under 
such  evident  illusion  as  to  the  independence  of  their  judg- 
ment that  we  smile  behind  their  backs.  Opposed  to  these 
we  also  know  individuals  who  are  as  contrary  as  the  way- 
ward child  :  men  who  will  be  original,  coelnm  mat.  And  it 
is  perhaps  as  often  the  occasion  of  remark  that  there  are 
analogous  differences  in  social  communities  springing  from 
these  individual  characteristics.  A  society  may  be  volatile, 
excitable,  suggestible ;  or  phlegmatic,  stolid,  inert.  The  Latin 
and  the  German  races  are  often  contrasted  on  these  lines. 


Conclusions  for  Social  Theory  245 

§  6.    Conclusions  for  Social  Theory 

158.  With  so  much  consideration  of  the  emotions  and 
impulses  which  urge  on  the  social  man,  we  may  now  sum 
up  the  conclusions,  of  a  general  kind,  to  which  we  have 
been  led  by  the  consideration  of  his  emotional  life. 
These  conclusions  may  be  set  forth  somewhat  as  follows : 

(1)  The  beginnings  of  social  life  are  found  in  the  ani- 
mals.    This  is  proved  not  only  by  the  emotional   life  of 
the  animals,  but  also  by  the  inherited  emotional  expres- 
sions of  the  child  (e.g.,  bashfulness  and  sympathy),  which 
point   unmistakably   to   animal   ancestry.      This   may  be 
called  '  instinctive '  social  life. 

(2)  There  is  a  stage  of  social  life  which  is,  so  to  speak, 
'  spontaneous.'      It  follows  simply  from  the  social  impulse 
itself,    considered   as   a   tendency  to  co-operative   action, 
which  arises  out  of  earlier  social  instincts.     It  marks  an 
early  stage  in  human  social  culture,  when  the  arts  of  peace 
and  the   rudimentary  forms  of   social  convention    proved 
themselves    useful   and   served   as   a  foundation   for    the 
larger  social  development  based  on  reflective  intelligence. 
This  period  is  shown  strikingly  in  certain  stages  of   the 
child's  and  youth's  modesty  reactions.     On  the  anthropo- 
logical side,  it  is  confirmed  by  the  existence  of  peace-loving 
primitive  peoples,  with  the  modes  of  co-operative  activity 
seen    in  their   industrial  contrivances  and  in  their   rites 
and  sports. 

(3)  The  child's  and  the  adult's  emotional  expressions 
point  to  a  further  development,  which  mere  spontaneous 
sociality  is  not  sufficient  to  explain.     It  is  marked  by  the 
adoption,  with  modifications,  of  the  emotional  reactions  of 
spontaneous  and  instinctive  periods,  thus  showing  unmis- 


246  His  Instincts  and  Emotions 

takably  its  origin ;  but  it  serves  to  introduce  a  further 
period,  which  in  the  growth  of  the  child  has  its  ground  in 
self-consciousness.  Conspicuous  among  the  exhibitions  of 
an  emotional  kind  which  characterize  this  period,  are  the 
modified  expressions  of  modesty  and  sympathy  which 
accompany  self-consciousness.  This  is  the  '  reflective ' 
period. 

(4)  The  general  impulse  of  society,  which  is  common  to 
all  the  manifestations  of  co-operative  life,  itself  gives  an 
emotion  which  appears  in  the  phenomenon  of  'plastic  imi- 
tation,' reaching  its  extreme  form  in  the  exhibitions  of 
mob-action.  It  is  an  index  of  the  fact  of  sociality  which 
works  by  imitation  rather  than  a  cause  of  it,  or  its  main 
outcome. 


CHAPTER   VII 

HlS    INTELLIGENCE1 

THE  preceding  examination  of  the  instinctive  and  emo- 
tional equipment  of  the  social  man  has  revealed  the  pres- 
ence in  him  of  something  not  adequately  expressed  in 
terms  of  inherited  reflexes.  The  growth  of  the  child  has 
also  shown  us  his  progress  out  of  his  inherited  reactions 
into  a  higher  sphere  of  invention  and  self-education,  to 
which  we  have  given  the  name  'reflective.'  All  this 
evidence  of  a  higher  part  in  man  which  draws  out,  utilizes, 
and  controls  the  powers  of  his  organic  nature,  and  also 
regulates  the  assembling  of  men  together  for  reasonable 
acts  of  a  co-operative  kind,  invites  us  to  a  more  direct  con- 
sideration. It  will  be  well  first  to  try  to  arrive  at  an 
understanding  of  the  nature  and  sphere  of  operation  of 
this  intelligence  of  his,  and  then  to  seek  out  more  espe- 
cially its  meaning  in  the  social  life. 

§  i.    Nature  of  Intelligence 

159.  Upon  the  first  of  these  tasks  we  may  not  linger 
long,  since  it  falls  to  theoretical  psychology  and  since 
recent  works  have  given  us  genetic  principles  which  serve 
to  bring  the  intelligence  within  the  purview  of  natural 
history.  Something  of  its  character  has  also  been  seen 

1  This  chapter  is  intended  merely  to  give  some  empirical  observations  on 
the  subject  of  the  social  nature  and  uses  of  the  intelligence. 

247 


248  His  Intelligence 

in  the  chapter  on  'Invention.'  The  intelligence  serves  cer- 
tain ends,  in  the  economy  of  personal  development,  which 
may  be  stated  in  such  general  terms  that  the  disagree- 
ments of  opposed  theories  may  not  be  aroused.  I  shall 
set  forth  these  general  functions  of  intelligence  in  the 
points  which  immediately  follow. 

(1)  It  is  by  intelligence  that  complex  knowledges  are 
built  up.     The  simple  perception  of  a  thing  does,  to  a 
degree,  involve  intelligence ;    and  this  the  animals  have. 
So,  also,  have  the  animals  association  of  ideas  and  a  ten- 
dency to  see  their  perceptions  in  related  systems  or  general 
classes;    the  statement   I    am   making,  therefore,    is   not 
intended  to  mark  off  a  human  endowment  in  any  exclusive 
sense.     But  if  we  ask  how  far  the  animals  go,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  in  the  development  which  gives  intelligence  its 
opportunity,  we  have  to  say  not  far — that  is,  not  far  as 
compared  with  man.     And  the  limitation  seems  to  be,  on 
the  intellectual  side,1  just  in  this  faculty  of  seeing  things 
in  groups,  as  complex  situations,  with  relations  of  general 
extent  and  meaning,  which  require  for  their  entertainment 
the  use  of  symbols  such  as  those  seen,  in  their  most  devel- 
oped form,  in  speech.     This,  then,  the  ability  to  think  in 
general  terms,  by  using  symbols  which  abbreviate  and  sum- 
marize detailed  systems  of  associations,  is  the  first  charac- 
teristic of  intelligence,  as  found  in  human  social  operation. 

(2)  The  other  thing  to  be  said  of  intelligence  is  cor- 
relative to  this.     //  is  the  guide  to  action  in  complex  situa- 
tions.    All  knowledge  tends  to  lead  to  action.     Even  the 
reflexes  of   instinct  are  started  by  sensational  processes 
which  discharge  through  the  muscles.     The  perception  of 

1  It  is  another  aspect  of  the  animal's  inability  to  judge  with  reference  to 
self,  spoken  of  in  Sect.  86. 


Nature  of  Intelligence  249 

an  object  leads  the  animal  to  act.  And  we  find  that  the 
more  complex  the  knowledges  or  perceptions  are,  the 
more  complex  also,  the  more  varied,  the  actions  become. 
And  the  variety  shows  itself  in  a  certain  show  of  acting  on 
alternatives,  or  '  clioosing?  as  we  say  of  the  higher  forms 
of  intelligence. 

Further,  in  view  of  this  possible  variety  and  choice,  we 
may  ask  after  the  motive  or  reason — the  particular  piece 
of  knowledge  —  which  tends  to  bring  out  an  act  of  a 
given  kind,  calling  it  the  '  end '  of  the  action.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  intelligence  that  the  actions  which  it  brings 
about  are  directed  toward  ends ;  that  they  are  appropriate 
to  realize,  in  whole  or  part,  directly  or  indirectly,  the 
events  or  situations  which  the  knowledges  depict.  If 
directly,  then  we  say  the  movement  reproduces  or  rein- 
states the  object  which  the  actor  is  thinking  about.  This 
is  plainest  in  a  reaction  of  simple  imitation,  where  the 
child  actually  makes  his  own  hands  or  tongue  reproduce 
the  figure  or  sound  which  he  sees  or  hears  another  make. 
If  indirect,  then  the  action  is  only  a  means  to  the  end ; 
only  a  first  term  in  a  series  of  actions  which  finally  termi- 
nate in  the  reproduction  or  securing  of  the  situation 
depicted  in  thought.  Advancing  intelligence  quickly 
learns  to  turn  all  its  knowledges  into  the  channels  fit  to 
accomplish  the  ends  now  pictured,  or  then  ;  and  shows 
the  ability  to  use  means  for  its  ends. 

It  is  evident,  of  course,  to  the  psychologist  that  this  is 
a  very  sketchy  account  of  intelligence.  So  it  is.  But  I 
am  not  aiming  to  justify  any  theoretical  account  of  intelli- 
gence. The  books  do  that,  and  I  may  refer  to  'them  for  the 
justification  of  the  points  made  and  their  genetic  demon- 
stration. I  am  only  stating  the  facts  of  the  intelligence, 


250  His  Intelligence 

in  their  simplest  terms,  in  order  to  use  them  in  what 
follows.  No  one  will  deny  that  intelligence  gives  us  gen- 
eral and  abstract  knowledges ;  nor  that  it  is  by  our  intelli- 
gence that  we  use  means  to  accomplish  ends.  If  one 
doubt  this,  let  him  look  to  the  idiot  or  to  the  young  child 
for  illustrations  of  the  inability  to  do  one  or  other  of  these 
things,  and  then  let  him  watch  the  same  unfortunate  weak- 
minded,  or  the  same  child,  and  see  him  learn  to  do  both 
these  things  together ;  and  he  will  have  all  the  evidence 
he  should  require.  So  if  we  should  throw  the  two  points 
together,  in  a  sentence,  getting  a  single  definition  of  intel- 
ligence which  should  answer  our  present  needs,  we  should 
say  :  intelligence  is  the  ability  to  understand  complex  situa- 
tions and  to  know  hoiv  to  act  suitably  in  reference  to  them. 

160.  With  this  very  brief  and  schematic  account  of  the 
intelligence  before  us,  we  may  turn  back  on  our  path  and 
notice  that  the  growth  of  the  child  in  learning  to  know  of 
himself  and  of  the  world,  as  depicted  in  the  earlier 
chapter,  is  simply  growth  in  intelligence.  We  saw  that 
his  inventions  were  always  just  the  attainment  of  ever 
broader  and  more  complex  knowledges,  and  we  also  saw 
that  his  tests  and  checks,  in  all  the  process,  were  just 
the  appeals  to  action  by  which  he  learned  to  use  what 
he  had  learned.  Complexity  of  understanding  and  suita- 
bleness of  action  are  the  two  points  of  interest  and  value 
in  all  his  development.  But  the  further  definition  of  each 
of  these  aspects  of  intelligence  now  arouses  further  ques- 
tion. The  child's  actual  system  of  knowledges,  apart 
from  the  more  or  less  fixed  relationships  of  external  nature, 
is  that  system  into  which  his  social  heredity  leads  him. 
We  have  seen  how  it  is  that  he  goes  on  constantly  in  t he- 
paths  which  the  usages  of  society,  the  traditions  of  his 


Nature  of  Intelligence  251 

elders,  the  forms  of  accessible  literature,  etc.,  open  up 
before  him.  It  is  impossible  for  him  to  make  his  system 
of  truths  for  himself,  and  even  the  advances  which  his 
thought  does  make  for  itself  are  constantly  brought  to 
social  tests,  before  he  accepts  them  as  valid  and  perma- 
nent acquisitions.  There  is,  therefore,  a  large  social 
ingredient  in  the  truths  which  each  individual  learns ;  and 
he  himself  constantly  testifies  to  its  power  over  him  by 
making  appeals  to  society  for  confirmation.  So  it  is  only 
what  we  should  expect,  that  his  action  should  reflect  the 
social  aspect  of  his  thought,  as  well  as  the  purely  personal 
aspect ;  that  he  should  live  normally  as  a  social  man  in  a 
social  environment. 

This  supposition  leads  us  to  ask  more  closely  for  a 
definition  of  the  other  aspect  of  his  intelligence  —  that 
which  relates  to  the  ends  of  action.  And  the  attempt  to 
answer  this  question  gets  additional  interest  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  an  historical  question,  and  that  the  discrimination 
and  testing  of  many  social  theories  now  in  the  field  is 
possible  only  when  we  get  some  consistent  answer  to  it. 
We  may  state  this  question  in  two  main  inquiries :  first, 
what  is  the  end  which  intelligent  action  has  in  view  ?  and 
second,  what  kinds  of  action  are  reasonable  with  reference 
to  this  end  ? 

161.  In  coming  to  a  discussion  of  these  topics,  we  are 
not  called  upon  to  seek  out  a  philosophy  of  ends,  nor  to 
bring  harmony  into  current  disputes  on  the  topic.  The 
main  antithesis  now  current  turns  upon  the  supposition 
that  one  or  the  other  of  two  views  is  true,  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  other.  One  class  of  men  say  that  the  end  of  action 
is  revealed  by  the  action ;  that  the  end  is  nothing  but  the 
statement  of  the  final  term  of  the  action  itself ;  that  intelli- 


252  His  Intelligence 

gence  has  its  natural  history,  as  an  agent  in  the  evolution 
of  mankind,  and  so  the  end  of  intelligence,  like  the  end 
of  the  evolution  process  itself,  is  to  be  discovered  only  by 
seeing  what  the  outcome  really  is.  The  question,  to  this 
theory,  is  a  question  of  fact,  depending,  however,  upon  the 
truth  of  the  genetic  view  of  the  mind.  This  is  the  theory 
of  autonomy:  the  man  as  a  whole  is  law-giving  to  himself, 
just  because  he  can  get  no  law  which  is  not  the  outcome 
of  the  very  process  of  development  which  he  himself 
represents. 

The  other  class  of  theories  hold  that  the  end  of  action 
is  set  for  the  man  by  some  instrumentality  outside  of  him. 
They  hold  to  hcteronomy.  The  end  is  some  real  and  abso- 
lute end,  which  it  is  his  business  to  aim  at,  whether  it 
arise  naturally  in  his  mind  or  no. 

The  body  of  the  doctrine  already  set  forth  in  this  essay, 
resting  as  it  does  on  the  general  position  that  every  psy- 
chological outcome  must  have  its  natural  history  and  its 
preliminary  stages,  and  that  every  function  or  activity 
must  have  its  raison  d'etre  in  a  content  which  normally 
arouses  it  —  all  this  forces  us  at  once  to  espouse  the  au- 
tonomy view.  The  end  of  action  must  be  a  function  of 
the  content  which  arouses  the  action.  The  dog  acts  with 
reference  to  perceptions ;  they  are  the  best  he  can  do. 
The  man  acts  with  reference  to  concepts,  with  distant  aims 
before  him  in  space  and  time ;  he  can  do  it  because  he  is 
able  to  feel  the  value  of  the  distant  and  the  general.  The 
nature  of  the  knowledge,  then,  is  that  which  determines 
the  sort  of  action  ;  and  the  action  must  terminate  upon 
this  knowledge,  not  on  some  other  knowledge  —  be  it 
better,  or  be  it  worse  knowledge. 

When  we  come  to  apply  this,  by  examining  the  know- 


Impersonal  Intelligence  253 

ledges  which  are  actually  found  among  us  anywhere, — in 
the  animal,  in  the  man,  in  society,  —  we  are  able  to  dis- 
tinguish three  sorts  of  ends  which  come  up  as  functional 
aims  for  action  in  the  sense  which  I  have  set  forth.  They 
represent  three  stages  in  the  progress  of  mind.  We  may 
say  that  the  ends  of  action,  are,  first,  impersonal  or  objec- 
tive, then  they  become  personal  or  subjective,  and,  finally, 
and  with  the  latter,  they  are  social  or  ejective.  These 
terms  may  be  described  in  more  detail. 

§  2.    Impersonal  Intelligence 

162.  The  distinction  between  the  consciousness  which 
has  no  reflection  on  self,  no  thought  of  a  self  as  a  separate 
being  and  as  the  source  of  the  very  thought  which  thinks 
it,  and  the  consciousness  which  does  have  this  reference  to 
a  personal  self  or  thinker,  has  been  fully  set  forth,  and  the 
development  of  the  thought  of  such  a  self  traced.  The 
action  of  a  consciousness,  then,  of  the  impersonal  kind  — 
the  consciousness  which  has  no  such  personal  thought  — 
cannot,  of  course,  have  as  its  end  or  aim  such  a  self.  If  the 
self  cannot  be  thought,  ipso  facto  it  cannot  be  put  forth  as 
the  end  of  action.  The  action  is  a  function  of  the  thought 
which  is  there,  and  if  the  thought  of  a  self  is  not  there,  then 
it  cannot  produce  action.  On  the  contrary,  the  thought  in 
a  consciousness  at  this  stage  is  always  the  thought  of  an 
object,  this  thing  or  that  there  in  the  world;  the  action  ter- 
minates with  this,  and,  as  far  as  the  consciousness  dictates 
the  action,  that  is  all  there  is  of  it.  We,  of  course,  who 
speculate  on  philosophical  questions,  ask,  further,  what  the 
place  is  of  this  action  in  the  system  of  organic  reactions 
which  go  to  illustrate  the  evolution  theory,  and  reach  a 


254  ff*s  Intelligence 

view,  perhaps,  that  the  action  which  is  selected  and  re- 
peated is  that  one  which  gives  pleasure ;  and  so  come  to 
say  that  the  end  of  that  action  is  pleasure.  But  that  is  a 
matter  of  our  philosophy,  not  of  the  animal's  end.  He 
does  not  stop  to  ask  for  pleasure  nor  to  distinguish  his 
actions  on  any  such  basis  until  he  gets  a  certain  association 
established  between  the  action  and  the  pleasure  which  it 
gives.  And  then  he  does  not  reflect  upon  the  pleasure, 
and  determine  that  he  will  pursue  it.  He  finds  his  impul- 
sive reaction  toward  pleasure  a  function  of  the  presence 
of  pleasure,  just  as  the  reaction  on  objects  is  a  function  of 
the  perception  of  the  objects. 

163.  But  now  we  can  see  that  it  is  the  business  of  natural 
selection  to  determine  the  kind  of  action  which  shall  find 
its  most  radical  fulfilment  in  the  world  through  this  imper- 
sonal thought.  As  we  have  seen,  this  has  required,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  that  the  family  should  arise ;  and  that, 
in  turn,  required  that  actions  of  a  so-called  co-operative 
kind  should  be  there.  Thus  arose  animal  instincts  of  a 
quasi-social  sort;  but  even  the  complex  family  instincts 
and  co-operation  of  the  animals  do  not  involve  personal, 
self-conscious  thought.  They  occur  in  appropriate  refer- 
ence to  the  objective  content  of  consciousness,  and  are 
always  a  function  of  this  content.  The  instincts,  how- 
ever inadequately  they  may  seem  to  be  represented  in  the 
actual  sensory  experiences  which  call  them  out,  neverthe- 
less seem  to  have  arisen  by  the  growing  adaptation  of  the 
organism  to  the  stimulations  of  the  environment.  The 
conclusion,  therefore,  is  that  these  also  are  impersonal 
activities.  They  have  no  personal  end ;  neither  the  ego 
nor  the  alter,  as  such,  appeals  to  the  animal.  The  actual 
meaning  to  him  of  his  actions  is  simply  that  they  happen ; 


Impersonal  Intelligence  255 

and  their  meaning  in  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  deter- 
mined by  the  complex  setting  of  conditions  of  which  the 
actions  in  question  form  a  part. 

164.  So  when  we  come  to  ask  the  second  great  question 
concerning  action  issuing  from  such  a  consciousness,  i.e., 
the  question  as  to  what  is  the  '  reasonable  '  action,  we  find 
a  certain  embarrassment.  The  concept  of  reasonableness 
does  not  apply  at  all,  seeing  that  the  animal  is  not  able  to 
reason.  If  he  does  not  have  actions  set  before  him  on 
which  he  has  to  pass  judgment  with  reference  to  their 
fitness  to  secure  an  end,  then  there  is  nothing  for  him  to 
do  but  to  act  out  each  mental  content  which  he  gets,  just 
as  it  comes  up.  All  stimulations  stand  on  the  same  basis. 
If  he  fail  to  act  on  each  situation  as  his  perception  of 
that  situation  dictates,  then  he  is  but  sick  or  maimed. 
That  is  all  that  we  can  say ;  there  is  no  question  of  relative 
reasonableness  in  his  actions.  So,  as  a  practical  result, 
we  have  to  say  that  the  co-operative  actions  by  which  he 
supports  the  family  life,  possibly  at  the  expense  of  his 
own  life,  —  as  when  the  mother  starves  herself  that  her 
young  may  be  fed,  —  are  just  as  reasonable  as  the  actions 
by  which  he  satisfies  his  own  appetite.  In  each  case  his 
mental  content  is  issuing  in  activity,  and  the  different 
activities  equally  express  his  nature. 

This  evident  neutrality  of  his,  —  say  of  the  companion- 
able dog  that  runs  beside  my  horse,  —  as  regards  any  pos- 
sible standard  of  reasonableness  in  his  action,  may  be 
emphasized  here,  although  no  one  would  contradict  it, 
possibly ;  for  when  we  come  to  the  corresponding  question 
about  the  higher  stages  of  consciousness,  we  are  apt  to 
want  just  this  sort  of  analogy  to  help  us.  It  does  not 
make  the  remotest  difference  to  the  dog  what  we  adult 


256  His  Intelligence 

men  may  say  about  his  folly  in  losing  his  life  to  save  mine 
or  yours,  or  about  his  acuteness  in  getting  his  dinner  by 
stealing  my  leg  of  lamb.  The  two  actions  are  equally 
reasonable  from  the  dog's  point  of  view,  because  each  is 
an  adequate  measure  of  his  mental  state  at  the  time.  The 
drowning  man  is  his  end  in  one  case,  because  there  is  the 
master  drowning,  and  action  follows  on  this  situation ;  in 
the  other  case,  the  meat  is  seen  and  smelt,  and  action 
follows  on  that. 

165.  The  corresponding  case  is  plain  in  man.  We 
have  found  in  him  also  many  actions  to  which  the  predi- 
cate '  reasonable '  and  its  opposite  do  not  apply.  All  the 
actions  of  his  which  he  shares  with  the  animals,  as  far  as 
they  represent  in  him  tendencies  which  his  reasonable 
thinking,  his  intelligence,  does  not  pass  upon,  are  of  this 
character.  This  epoch  in  human  development  is  seen  in 
the  child  up  to  its  third  year  or  thereabouts,  when  he 
begins  to  grow  reflective.  We  do  not  blame  the  child  for 
acting  on  his  instincts.  We  do  not  say  he  is  unreasonable 
in  not  using  means  to  ends,  nor  reasonable  in  accomplish- 
ing ends  by  those  endowments  shared  with  the  animals, 
by  which  he  sometimes  reaches  ends  without  means. 
He  is  simply  a  creature  of  suggestion,  of  action  in  terms 
of  content,  first-intention  action,  as  the  philosophers 
say.  And,  moreover,  it  is  true  of  him,  as  it  is  of  the 
animals,  that  the  end  which  his  actions  do  subserve,— 
the  objective  ends  to  which  we  by  our  philosophy  find  his 
whole  life  process  to  minister,  —  this  is  an  affair  of  the 
examination  of  the  data  which  the  evolution  process  in- 
volves at  that  particular  stage.  If  the  activities  of  co- 
operative instinct  are  prominent  along  with  the  personal, 
aggressive,  individualistic  activities,  then  the  end  of  the 


Personal  Intelligence  257 

evolution  process  must  be  conceived  of  as  including  both 
these  classes  of  data.  And  the  reasonable  aspect  of 
development,  the  end  which  it  sets  out  to  reach,  must  be 
broad  enough  to  hold  both  these  factors  together  in  a 
single  conception.  But  to  justify  any  such  view  from  the 
animal's  or  child's  consciousness  would  be  possible  only 
in  the  later  stage  of  development,  in  which  intelligence 
becomes  personal. 

§  3.    Personal  Intelligence 

1 66.  For  the  mode  and  method  of  the  mind's  passage 
from  the  impersonal  to  the  personal  and  social  forms  of 
thought,  I  must  again  refer  to  what  has  been  said  in 
detail  of  the  child's  mental  development.  It  has  been 
traced  all  the  way  from  '  personality  suggestion,'  which  is 
the  merest  distinction  of  persons  from  other  objects,  on  the 
ground  of  characteristic  ways  of  behaviour,  up  to  the  full 
antithesis  of  ego  and  alter.  And  in  it  we  have  also 
pointed  out  the  movement  by  which  he  thinks,  in  terms  of 
one  self,  of  the  two,  or  the  other.  It  now  becomes  our 
task  to  inquire  how  his  intelligence  makes  these  thoughts 
available  in  its  general  building  up  of  knowledge,  on 
the  one  hand ;  and  then  what  of  reasonable  character  the 
actions  which  result  may  consequently  get.  In  short,  the 
two  inquiries  are  those  suggested  above:  i.e.,  (i)  what  is 
the  end  set  up  in  this  personal  form  of  consciousness? 
and  (2)  how  and  to  what  extent  are  the  actions  then 
performed  reasonable  with  reference  to  the  securing  of 
these  ends  ? 

Taking  up  the  first  of  these  questions  at  this  higher 
level,  we  find  that  the  trend  of  contemporary  philosophy 


258  His  Intelligence 

and  ethics  may  be  stated  in  a  broad  form,  which  steers 
reasonably  clear  of  the  discussions  of  the  schools.  The 
problem  familiar  to  psychologists  in  the  term  '  desire '  is 
not  now  before  us ; 1  but  the  use  made  of  the  notion  of 
desire  in  many  of  the  books  on  sociology  and  political 
economy  justifies  us  the  more  in  giving  the  topic  the 
meed  of  attention  which  our  present  development  needs. 
What  is  it  that  man  desires  ? 

167.  The  doctrines  of  the  end  of  desire  now  current 
fall  together  in  a  series  which  is  in  itself  significant.  We 
have  the  end  of  desire  stated  alternatively,  i.e.,  as  'an 
object,'  'the  possession  of  an  object,'  'the  enjoyment  of 
an  object,'  'enjoyment  in  general,'  'enjoyment  of  self,' 
'the  self  who  enjoys,'  'self-realization,'  'the  attainment  of 
a  better  self.'  The  theories,  in  other  words,  travel  all  the 
way  from  the  object  to  the  self.  And  it  is  the  simplest 
thing  in  the  world  to  say  why  they  do  so.  It  is  because 
each  of  these  formulations  seeks  to  elevate  the  statement 
of  some  one  aspect  of  desire  into  a  general  formula. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  every  mature  man  of  us  has  all  of 
these  desires.  And  not  only  so ;  there  are  epochs  of 
development  which  are  characterized  by  one  or  other 
of  these  ends,  as  then  the  great  and  prevailing  sort  of 
desire. 

The  reason  for  this  variety  is  that  the  desire  is  a  function 
of  the  thought  which  lies  back  of  it.  The  desire  is  the 
tendency  to  action  which  the  thought  arouses.  So  the 
examination  of  the  thought  is  the  necessary  preliminary 
to  the  determination  of  the  kind  of  desire  and  its  end. 
Given  the  thought  which  terminates  on  objects,  that 

1  See  below,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3,  where  desire  is  considered  with  reference  to  the 
•  sanction  '  under  which  it  attains  its  ends. 


Personal  Intelligence  259 

which  is  quite  impersonal,  unreflective,  and  the  end  of 
its  desire  is  the  object.  This  in  its  purity  is  what  is 
called  above  the  impersonal  stage.  But  given  the  thought 
which  brings  up  pleasure  strongly,  with  enough  reflection 
to  single  out  the  pleasure  and  set  it  forward  in  something 
of  an  abstract  way,  and  the  desire  then  terminates  on  the 
pleasure.  And  yet  again ;  given  the  thought  of  self 
as  the  constant  being  whose  interests  are  represented  in 
the  pleasure,  whose  life  demands  pleasure,  and  whose  per- 
fection is  the  goal  of  all  the  highest  pleasures,  then  the 
desire  terminates  on  the  self,  and  perhaps  on  an  ideal 
self.  All  very  good.  So  we  must  again  distinguish  between 
the  end  of  the  particular  action  or  desire  itself  and  the 
philosophy  which  we  reason  out  on  the  basis  of  those 
particular  sorts  of  desire.  The  former  is  the  progressive 
developing  thing  which  the  thought  itself  is;  and  the 
latter  is  the  interpretation  of  one  or  other,  or  all,  of  the 
stages. 

This  general  position  once  taken,  we  have  to  do  hence- 
forwr.rd,  not  with  an  attempt  to  get  a  philosophical  theory 
of  the  end  of  human  action  which  will  satisfy  all  the  con- 
ditions, nor  with  the  attempt  to  read  into  each  of  the 
stages  of  development  the  results  of  such  a  theory.  Our 
task  is  rather  to  find  such  general  distinctions  in  the  con- 
tent of  thought  at  the  different  epochs  of  human  develop- 
ment as  give  differences  of  end  at  the  corresponding 
epochs.1  Whatever  significance  these  epochs  of  develop- 
ment may  have  for  a  general  theory  of  mind,  they  have 

1  Cf.  the  distinction  made  below,  Chap.  IX.,  §  3,  on  '  Sanctions,'  between  the 
'  world  of  fact '  and  the  'world  of  desire.'  Our  object  in  the  later  chapter  is  to 
show  that,  at  whatever  stage  of  consciousness,  the  'thing  of  desire,'  or  the  full 
motive,  rather  than  the  mere  object  or  '  thing  of  fact,'  is  what  sanctions  the 
resulting  action. 


260  ///>   Intelligence 

direct  significance  for  the  attempt  to  arrive  at  a  genetic 
account  of  the  social  life  of  man. 

The  problem  has  been  thus  defined  in  the  preceding 
pages.  The  three  epochs  of  the  genetic  development  of 
thought  —  the  impersonal,  the  personal,  and  the  social 
epochs  —  have  been  mentioned.  The  present  digression 
is  made  in  order  to  justify  the  use  of  them  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  demarcation  of  our  present  problem,  as 
over  against  the  philosophies  of  desire  current  in  social 
and  ethical  discussion.  To  be  sure,  we  might  carry 
our  claim  further,  and  say  that  philosophy,  in  its  search 
for  general  principles  of  construction,  —  such  as  the 
theory  of  end  requires,  —  should  proceed  out  from  the 
empirical  examination  of  the  actual  course  of  develop- 
ment, and  interpret  action  in  terms  of  thought  epochs. 
This  would  be  true ;  and  philosophers  need  to  be  told  so, 
I  think. 

1 68.  So  we  come  to  ask  after  the  meaning  of  the  per- 
sonal and  social  epochs  of  thought  for  the  theory  of  end. 

At  the  outset,  certain  points  already  made  come  to 
mind.  First,  we  have  found,  in  the  preceding  chapter  on 
the  '  Emotions,'  that  there  is  no  break  of  an  absolute 
kind  between  the  epochs  which,  on  the  side  of  the  in- 
stinctive life,  we  called  respectively  '  organic '  and  '  spon- 
taneous ' ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  likewise  none 
between  the  '  spontaneous  '  and  the  '  reflective '  epochs. 
This  was  made  plain  from  two  points  of  vicu  :  the  emo- 
tional expressions  of  the  organic  epoch  are  utilized  in  the 
higher  epochs  by  a  natural  transition  from  the  lower  to 
the  higher  type  of  function.  Further,  the  child  shows  no 
great  breaks  in  his  development  from  instinct,  through 
suggestion  and  direct  imitation,  to  reflection  ;  at  least,  on 


Personal  Intelligence  261 

the  side  of  the  emotional  movements  of  his  modesty,  sym- 
pathy, play-activities,  etc.  His  progress  is  continuous. 
Each  of  his  spontaneous  activities  grows  right  up  out  of  his 
instinctive  performances ;  and  then  each  of  his  reflective 
emotional  attitudes  is  only  a  further  adaptation  and  con- 
firmation of  the  spontaneous  ones.  And  a  third  line  of 
evidence  was  suggested  from  the  side  of  anthropology. 
The  progress  of  race  culture  shows  similar  transitions 
from  the  savage  to  the  gregarious  and  nomadic,  and  then 
to  the  reflective  forms  of  co-operation.  Yet  we  found  it 
more  difficult  to  conceive  the  transition  from  the  sponta- 
neous to  the  reflective  than  we  did  from  the  instinctive  to 
the  spontaneous  sort  of  activity.  The  reflective  seems 
to  represent  a  new  trend  of  development,  inasmuch  as 
it  involves,  as  we  now  see,  the  two  great  characteristics 
of  intelligent  adaptation,  —  the  appreciation  of  general 
and  abstract  situations,  with  the  drawing  of  inferences 
looking  toward  distant  ends,  and  the  adoption  of  means 
appropriate  to  the  accomplishment  of  these  ends.  The 
burden  of  the  case,  therefore,  —  the  cause  of  the  transi- 
tion, —  rests  upon  the  intelligence,  and  its  meaning  be- 
comes the  further  problem. 

Turning  to  the  other  main  development  of  the  preced- 
ing pages,  the  child's  development  on  the  side  of  inven- 
tion and  personal  interpretation,  we  have  more  light,  I 
think.  We  found  that  the  child's  imitations  are  a  means 
to  personal  growth  only  in  so  far  as  he  made  the  result,  in 
each  case,  the  basis  of  an  interpretation  for  action.  He 
reaches  synthetic  combinations  of  data  constantly,  and  it 
is  these  which  enable  him  to  act  more  appropriately.  He 
is  like  the  genius,  in  that  he  reaches  ever-changing  and 
novel  arrangements  of  the  elements  of  presentation  and 


262  His  Intelligence 

memory.  By  the  laws  of  assimilation,  motor  habit  and 
accommodation,  he  is  quite  unable  to  be  stationary.  He 
must  see  and  react  to  new  situations  every  day. 

His  growth  takes  place  under  two  general  aspects. 
First,  his  tendency  to  generalize  is  a  matter  of  growth  in 
the  facility  with  which  lie  learns  to  act  upon  things  in  com- 
mon or  general  ways  instead  of  treating  each  individual 
fact  and  event  in  a  special  and  peculiar  way.  His  growth 
in  ability  to  reach  complex  thought  is  a  matter  of  growing 
unity  of  habit  in  his  active  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
with  this  comes  also  the  ability  to  single  out  the  particular 
and  treat  it  in  relation  to  the  group  in  which  it  belongs ; 
this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  in  his  learning  to  act,  in  his 
successive  accommodations  of  himself  actively  to  the  facts 
and  events  of  the  world  in  succession,  he  has  secured  a 
sense  of  their  isolation  and  a  mode  of  treatment  of  them 
in  isolation.  In  this  relation  of  the  single  fact  to  the 
general  class,  —  a  relation  which  arises  through  the  joint 
action  of  habit  and  accommodation,1  —  we  have  the  ger- 
minating tendency  of  intelligence  to  reach  an  interpreta- 
tion of  each  particular  in  the  general  situation  which  comes 
before  the  mind  by  the  system  of  steps  which  we  call 
inference  and  reasoning. 

This  is  a  very  summary  characterization  of  the  gene- 
sis of  thought ;  and  intentionally  so,  since  the  genesis  of 
thought  is  not  our  problem.  We  might  just  assume  that 
thought  has  a  genesis,  or,  if  you  please,  a  beginning,  and 
then  go  on  to  ask  its  sphere  in  the  evolution  of  social  life ; 

1  See  the  detailed  treatment  of  these  principles  of  the  genesis  of  the  func- 
tion of  thought  in  my  Ment.  Devel.,  Chaps.  X.-XI.;  cf.  also  James  on  the 
'  Genesis  of  the  Elementary  Mental  Categories,'  Psych.,  II.,  pp.  629  ff.  See 
also  Chap.  III.,  §  3  above,  on  'Selective  Thinking.' 


Personal  Intelligence  263 

but  I  have  preferred  to  state  in  outline  what  I  believe  to 
l>e  the  real  genesis  of  thought,  seeing  that  it  has  the 
peculiarity  of  making  the  motor  accommodations  and 
habits  of  the  thinker  the  leading-string  to  his  intelli- 
gence. This  holds  together  the  two  positions  taken  that 
the  end  is  a  function  of  the  thought-content,  and  that  it 
is  by  acting  to  realize  ends  that  thought  develops.  The 
child,  for  example,  has  the  purpose  to  imitate  my  move- 
ments. He  cannot  have  that  purpose  until  he  has  thought 
of  the  movement ;  but  he  cannot  arrive  at  a  more  adequate 
thought  of  the  movement  unless  he  act  continually  on  the 
thought  he  already  has.  The  former  thought  gives  him 
his  present  possible  act ;  and  his  present  act  gives  him  the 
new  thought.  So  action  and  thought  grow  together  as 
correlative  aspects  of  intelligence.  Now  we  may  go  on 
to  consider  the  social  interpretation  of  this  state  of  things 
in  the  life  of  the  child. 

169.  Disregarding  the  interpretations  which  the  child 
makes  of  the  impersonal  elements  of  his  thought,  and  so 
of  the  progressive  knowledges  which  he  builds  up  of  the 
external  world,  we  may  turn  at  once  to  the  social  element 
in  his  personal  growth.  With  this  distinction,  however,  I 
do  not  wish  to  deny  that  there  are  social  elements  also  in 
his  knowledge  of  the  external  world ;  there  are.  But  the 
method  of  the  child's  interpretations,  in  all  his  knowledge, 
is  the  same,  and  is  a  function  of  his  personal  growth ;  so 
by  taking  the  knowledges  which  have  specific  reference  to 
his  social  surroundings,  and  inquiring  after  the  social 
factors  involved  in  them,  we  bring  out  most  clearly  the 
sphere  of  social  suggestion  where  it  is  most  important 
both  in  itself  and  for  our  present  line  of  thought.  The 
question  then  is:  what  social  elements  enter  into  the 


2t>4  tf*s  Intelligence 

child's  interpretations  of  situations  of  social  value,  and 
what  uses  does  he  make  of  these  interpretations  them- 
selves? Or,  in  other  words,  what  is  the  content  of  the 
thought  which  stimulates  the  child  to  social  actions,  and 
what  are  the  actions  which  are  '  reasonably '  performed 
with  this  end  in  view.  These  are  the  two  questions 
already  stated :  the  end,  and  the  means  to  the  end. 

As  to  the  content  to  the  child's  thought  of  social  situa- 
tions, that  is  twofold.  The  concrete  ego  and  alter  thoughts 
fall  together  on  one  side,  over  against  the  thought  of  an 
ideal  personality  on  the  other  side.  So  there  comes  to  con- 
sciousness, when  we  follow  the  child  up  into  the  beginnings 
of  his  ethical  life,  a  threefold  sense  of  self,  each  a  sort  of 
net  for  the  assimilation  and  interpretation  of  new  experi- 
ences or  suggestions  of  personal  relationship.  He  has  a 
thought  of  himself,  the  ego  with  a  group  of  very  well- 
defined  emotions  of  self-interest;  this  grows  more  and 
more  solid,  circumscribed,  and  compulsory  upon  all  the 
candidates  for  position  in  his  thought.  Then  he  has  a 
thought  of  the  alter,  who  presents  himself  from  time  to 
time ;  and  with  this  the  group  of  altruistic  emotions  seen 
in  modesty,  self-shrinking,  sympathy,  etc.  —  another  mental 
net  always  ready  to  entrap  and  assimilate  the  suggestions 
of  personal  presence,  action,  etc.,  which  come  and  go  in 
the  environment.  Third,  the  general  or  ideal  thought  of 
self,  around  which  the  higher  sentiments  spring  up.  Be- 
fore going  on  to  speak  of  the  third  sense  of  self,  with  the 
sentiments  which  accompany  it,  we  should  define  the  other 
two  and  estimate  their  importance  and  relation  to  each 
other,  recalling  what  has  been  said  of  them  in  an  earlier 
connection. 

170.    First,  it  becomes  clear  to  us,  both  from  the  con- 


Personal  Intelligence  265 

sideration  of  the  emotional  transitions  which  we  have 
already  studied,  and  from  the  actual  observations  of  the 
child,  that  before  reflection  arises  —  that  is,  before  the 
sense  of  a  general  self  is  clearly  defined  —  this  antithe* 
sis  in  relation  to  the  alter  is  not  fully  distinct.  The 
thought  of  you  versus  me  is  not  there.  It  is,  'my  toy 
versus  your  toy,'  '  my  act  versus  your  act,'  '  my  voice 
versus  your  voice,'  etc.  The  first  person  is  usually  in 
the  possessive  case.  The  materials  of  the  antithesis  are 
being  gathered,  in  this  way,  from  the  single  situations 
into  which  instinctive  and  spontaneous  activities  urge  the 
child. 

But  then  as  reflection  arises  there  comes  the  movement, 
described  above,  by  which  the  self  becomes  solidified  by 
degrees ;  and  the  externals  of  personal  identity  also  come 
in  to  hold  the  ego  and  the  alter  apart.  Then,  as  the  self 
becomes  a  separate  thought,  it  tends,  like  every  thought,  to 
assume  an  attitude,  and  a  series  of  personal  actions  mani- 
fest themselves.  The  child  begins  to  act  for  himself  first, 
and  for  the  other  afterwards.  This  again  —  this  action  — 
now  also  reacts  to  strengthen  and  harden  the  thought  of 
self,  and  to  emphasize  its  relative-  distinctness  from  the 
alter,  by  the  reactive  influence  of  action  on  thought  spoken 
of  above.  This  is  the  germinating  development  of  reflec- 
tive selfishness.  It  means  a  self  actually  thought  of  as  in 
opposition  to  the  alter,  together  with  a  series  of  actions 
which  are  calculated  to  harden  and  perpetuate  this  op- 
position. The  end  is  the  self  considered  explicitly  as 
'  my  self,  and  not  your  self,  nor  anybody  else's  self?  J  And 
with  this  the  general  self  is  identified  or  contrasted  in  each 
case  of  action. 

'•  This  shows  itself  socially  in  what  is  called  '  opposition '  above  (Sect.  149). 


266  His  Intelligence 

Let  us  see  clearly,  then,  how  real  selfishness  arises.  It 
comes  by  the  very  movement  which  establishes  reflectively 
the  antithesis  between  the  thought  of  me  and  the  thought 
of  you.  Certain  movement  attitudes  must  arise  on  each 
side,  attitudes  which  represent  my  gain  with  or  without 
your  loss,  my  pleasure  with  or  without  your  pain,  and  the 
reverse.  Now  it  is  just  these  movement  experiences,  these 
active  attitudes,  which  constitute,  as  we  have  seen,  the  syn- 
thesis of  reflection  as  such.  Through  their  appropriate- 
ness to  the  ego  side  of  the  antithesis  in  the  one  case,  they 
fix  that  side  and  furnish  what  we  call  '  desire  '  for  the  main- 
tenance of  that  side  of  the  self-antithesis.  I  reflect  on  my- 
self and  act  selfishly  when  I  entertain  the  thought  of  the 
opposed  actions  which  the  two  elements  of  self-thought 
tend  to  arouse,  and  then  adopt  the  conduct  which  repre- 
sents the  ego  side.  The  ego  then  becomes  my  end  simply 
because  it  prevails  in  the  synthesis  of  reflection.  The 
presence  of  so-called  reflection  is  the  presence  of  tlie  clear 
antithesis  of  the  two  thoughts  of  self  held  together  in  a 
wider  synthesis  to  which  all  the  tendencies  to  movement, 
action,  conduct,  give  rise ;  and  the  consciousness  of  the 
higher  synthesis  itself,  representing  a  more  or  less  estab- 
lished habit,  is  the  general  or  ideal  self.1 

171.  With  it  reflective  altruism  arises  also.  It  must 
arise  just  because  the  ego  and  the  alter  are  antithetic 
thoughts,  two  poles  in  a  wider  thought  process.  The 
thought  of  the  alter,  as  it  becomes  solidified  over  against 
the  ego,  prompts  to  a  line  of  action  different  from  that 

1  It  is  '  general '  when  considered  retrospectively,  as  finding  concrete  illus- 
trations in  actual  personalities,  or  as  l>eing  experiential  in  its  origin;  so  it  is 
4  general '  when  looked  at  '  subjectively '  or  '  ejectively."  It  is  '  ideal '  when 
looked  at  frosfettively,  as  yet  unfinished,  not  fully  experienced,  liable  to 
further  growth  in  experience,  and  so  in  its  actual  embodiment  '  protective.' 


Personal  Intelligence  267 

which  is  liberated  by  the  ego.  This  line  of  action  comes 
to  represent  a  policy  in  the  active  life  which  inhibits  or 
interferes  with  the  habits  of  selfish  action ;  and  again,  by 
its  emotional  expressions  it  reacts  to  solidify  further  the 
thought  of  the  alter.  Sympathy  comes  to  be  an  adopted 
channel  of  action  to  the  reflective  person  whose  experience 
is  thus  growing  in  organization  and  richness.  And  when 
he  comes  to  a  decision,  after  this  contrast  between  the  two 
self  thoughts  and  their  respective  promptings  to  action 
has  been  sharply  drawn,  —  as  in  the  child  of  about  three 
to  four  years  of  age,  —  then  he  becomes  more  or  less  cal- 
culating as  to  the  consequences  to  be  expected  from  the 
action  itself,  and  from  its  social  reception  by  others. 

172.  Then  there  intervenes  another  stage  of  develop- 
ment which  both  sustains  the  characteristic  distinction 
now  before  us,  and  also  goes  further.  The  child  does  not 
long  rest  merely  upon  the  first  effects  of  his  action  on 
himself  and  others.  A  new  movement  of  his  intelligence 
leads  him  to  make  use  of  '  second  causes.'  The  fact  that 
action  has  now  become  a  means  to  an  end  —  the  end  of 
reinstating  and  securing  the  ego-self  or  the  alter-self- 
this  does  not  remain  undeveloped.  It  requires  no  great 
increase  in  the  complexity  of  his  thought  to  conceive  the 
possibility  of  using  other  elements  of  experience  to  minis- 
ter to  the  same  ends.  Moreover,  he  is  not  left  to  himself 
to  make  this  step ;  in  this,  as  in  everything  else  in  the 
social  heritage  into  which  he  grows  up,  he  is  initiated  by 
his  fellows.  He  sees  mother  and  nurse  handle  things 
for  the  preparation  of  his  food,  bed,  clothing,  etc.,  —  all 
actions  which  have  three  terms  instead  of  two,  as  we  may 
go  on  to  explain. 

There   is   the   thought  of   the   thing   to   be   done,  the 


268  His 

thought  of  the  thing  by  which  it  is  to  be  done,  and, 
finally,  the  thought  of  the  action  by  which  the  latter  of 
these  thoughts  is  carried  out.  We  find  the  child  catching 
this  idea  at  a  remarkably  early  age.  In  fact,  I  think  he 
learns  it  first  by  the  ordinary  processes  of  organic  move- 
ment by  which  his  thought  of  an  object  has  to  be  followed 
by  the  thought  of  a  movement,  in  order  that  the  movement 
made  may  bring  the  object  into  reach,  etc.  By  repetitions 
of  this  he  is  enabled  to  put  a  series  of  movement-thoughts 
in  succession  between  the  thought  of  the  object  and  the 
actual  end-movements  by  which  the  object  is  finally 
secured ;  it  is  likely,  therefore,  that  there  is  a  form  of 
unreflective  action  on  means  to  ends.  But  in  this,  too, 
the  development  is  from  a  simpler  to  a  more  ideational  or 
reflective  epoch.  Given  the  thought  of  self,  —  either  the 
ego  thought  or  the  alter  thought,  —  and  the  child  (hen 
fnnis  tlic  machinery  of  earlier  adaptations  of  means  to  ends 
to  the  pursuit  of  that.  So  he  becomes  not  only  a  reflective 
egoist  and  altruist,  but  a  plotter  as  well :  an  agent  of  man- 
or less  distant  personal  ends. 

Among  instances  of  this  in  child  life,  I  may  note  the 
fact  that  the  child  soon  comes  to  see  the  social  use  which 
he  may  make  of  this  turn  of  things.  His  egoism  prompts 
him,  in  a  sense,  to  victimize  the  alter ;  and  in  this  we  find 
another  of  the  highly  interesting  cases  of  children's  lies. 

173.  It  happens  in  this  way:  The  child's  thought  of 
the  alter  is  read  back  into  the  actual  alter ;  and  thus,  with 
a  great  many  contributing  details,  the  child  keeps  himself 
and  the  other  apart.  He  attributes  to  the  alter  —  say  his 
father  —  the  set  of  actions  with  view  to  ends  similar  to  his 
own;  and  his  proof  of  this  is  the  fact  that  whenever  he 
acts  in  a  certain  way,  his  father  responds  by  acting  in  a 


Personal  Intelligence  269 

way  which  fits  into  his  own  action  and  expectation.  So 
common  understandings  are  reached  between  the  two. 
Not  only  does  the  child  find  that  he  can  depend  upon 
others  for  the  suggestion  of  thoughts  which  fit  into  the 
surrounding  conditions,  but  he  learns  that  the  alter  depends 
also  zipon  the  suggestions  which  he  makes.  The  sugges- 
tion-influences he  sees  to  be  reciprocal.  So  he  has  a  way 
before  him  of  bringing  the  father's  actions  into  the  series 
of  events  which  contribute  to  his  own  ulterior  thought. 

For  example,  one  of  the  earliest  instances  I  have  ob- 
served is  this :  the  child's  crying  leads  the  mother  to  bring 
food ;  the  cry  is  the  suggestion  upon  which  the  mother 
can  be  counted  to  act.  So  very  early  we  find  the  child 
using  the  cry  to  obtain  food  or  other  favours  from  his 
mother,  even  when  he  is  in  no  need.  Pleasurable  memo- 
ries hover  before  him,  possibly  simply  that  of  his  mother's 
presence.  With  them  comes  up  the  thought  of  certain 
actions  of  his  mother  which  bring  the  pleasure ;  then  he 
remembers  that  his  cry  will  be  the  appropriate  suggestion 
to  start  his  mother.  So  he  makes  use  of  the  means  and 
attains  the  end.  The  cry  is  a  means  to  an  end  once  re- 
moved ;  and  the  interesting  thing,  from  our  present  point 
of  view,  is  that  the  first  link  in  the  chain  which  the  child 
uses  is  a  social  link.  It  really  involves  using  his  intelli- 
gence to  direct  and  employ,  for  his  own  private  ends,  the 
social  influence  which  we  call  personal  suggestion. 

Here  we  have  possibly  the  first  use  of  the  social  bond 
by  the  individual's  intelligence ;  and  in  it  there  lies,  by  im- 
plication, all  the  conscious  poivcr  and  function  of  thought  in 
the  manipulation  of  society.  It  means  that  in  thinking  self 
the  child-agent  thinks  a  social  situation,  and  that  he  then 
uses  the  other  elements  of  the  situation  to  realize  the  ends 


270  His  Intelligence 

of  the  self;  this  is  the  social  function  of  thought  every- 
where when  considered  as  the  instrument  of  the  thinker  s 
use  of  society  in  contrast  with  society  s  use  of  the  thinker 
and  his  thoughts.  We  shall  have  to  return  to  this  later 
on  in  this  chapter ;  1  at  present  let  us  trace  a  little  further 
the  child's  use  of  this  social  resource. 

174.  It  is  not  morally  a  lie,  of  course,  when  the  child 
cries  for  what  he  does  not  need,  and  by  crying  gets  it. 
It  is  not  moral,  because,  like  almost  all  the  proceedings 
which  come  to  be  reflective,  it  is  at  first  merely  a  matter 
of  association  and  active  adaptation  to  an  associated  train 
of  thoughts.  It  does  not  matter  to  the  child  that  it  is 
another  person  that  his  cry  appeals  to.  It  is  simply  an 
accident  that  the  whole  train  implicates  his  thought  of 
the  alter  together  with  other  and  impersonal  terms. 
Other  trains  of  thoughts  also  exist  which  implicate  only 
his  own  ego  thought  and  certain  external  objects,  and 
he  acts  in  exactly  the  same  way  upon  them ;  as,  for 
example,  when  the  thought  of  a  satisfaction  arouses  his 
sense  of  the  reaching  movements  of  grasping,  and  he  goes 
through  this  series  of  means  to  that  end.  The  two  cases 
are  just  the  same  to  him  ;  and  he  can  work  them  equally 
well,  provided  that  he  find  the  mother's  movements  fol- 
low upon  his  action,  just  as  his  own  movements  would 
have,  if  his  own  had  been  all  that  were  required  in  the 
case.  It  is  then  at  first  a  spontaneous  use  of  the  social 
bond  by  the  child.  It  does  not  involve  any  degree  of 
what  we  call  reflective  cunning  or  craft.2 

1  The  other  question,  i.e.,  that  of  the  function  of  the  intellectual  output  of 
individuals  in  affording  to  society  its  matter  for  adoption  and  absorption,  is 
treated  in  Chap.  XI.,  'The  Social  Forces.' 

3  This  would  seem  to  he  the  case  with  a  dog  belonging  to  an  uncle  of  my 
wife;  the  dog  lay  on  a  forbidden  chair  in  the  drawing-room,  and  hearing  his 


Personal  Intelligence  271 

Yet  it  does  not  retain  this  simplicity  very  long.  The 
child  soon  gets  away  from  the  associated  trains  which 
originate  in  real  wants,  and  involve  only  real  wants  and 
their  satisfactions.  And  the  step  which  he  first  takes  in 
the  path  of  reflective  deception  is  usually,  I  think,  one  of 
a  negative  kind  ;  he  uses  the  social  bond  to  deflect  pains 
and  penalties  from  himself.  This,  again,  is  a  slight 
thing  in  his  mental  growth,  proceeding  somewhat  as 
follows :  — 

The  trains  which  lead  to  disastrous  consequences,  both 
when  he  alone  is  involved  and  also  when  the  alter  per- 
sonality is  one  of  the  mean-terms  to  the  result,  get  very 
strong  marking  and  great  adhesiveness  in  his  conscious- 
ness. Anything  which  comes  in  as  a  further  term,  in  the 
same  series,  to  deflect  the  result  or  to  lead  to  other  and 
less  disastrous  consequences,  is  again  a  mere  matter  of 
learning  by  association,  and  of  learning  of  exactly  the 
same  kind  as  that  by  which  the  train  was  originally 
started.  He  then  takes  one  of  two  methods  to  supple- 
ment these  disastrous  trains.  One  method  is  to  interpo- 
late a  term  which  will  prevent  altogether  the  action  which 
he  wishes  to  avoid ;  the  other  is  the  employment  of  fur- 
ther means  to  supplement  the  train  and  so  render  it 
neutral.  The  first  case  is  seen  plainly  in  the  repressions 
of  his  own  activity,  or  of  his  normal  expressions  of  him- 
self, which  are  tell-tale  indications  to  father  or  mother. 
Thus  he  may  directly  escape  punishment,  a  dose  of  bitter 
medicine,  or  the  like.  The  other  is  seen  in  his  actually 
misleading  other  people  by  word  or  action,  when  the 
real  facts  are  unknown  to  them.  Instances  are  common 

master  coming  down-stairs,  quickly  jumped  beneath  a  table  near  by,  and  lay 
quiet,  as  if  asleep. 


272  His  Intelligence 

enough.1  It  involves  some  invention  and  social  know- 
ledge. The  following  example  may  serve  to  illustrate  it. 

The  two  children,  H.  (five  years)  and  E.  (three  years), 
were  playing  in  my  empty  study.  I  heard  E.  cry  out  with 
pain,  and  came  to  the  door  just  in  time  to  see  H.  clapping 
her  hands  with  joy  and  laughing  mockingly  at  E.  (whom 
it  appeared  afterwards  she  had  slightly  hurt  in  wresting 
away  a  toy).  As  soon  as  my  footstep  was  heard,  H.'s 
face  and  manner  changed  with  marvellous  quickness, 
from  joy  to  keen  sorrow  and  sympathy.  She  dropped 
the  toy,  and  before  I  reached  the  scene  her  attitude 
was  one  of  profound  sympathy,  commiseration,  and  dis- 
tress. Then,  not  satisfied  with  this,  she  turned  quickly 
and  pretended  to  be  occupied  in  another  part  of  the  room. 

In  this  case,  not  to  dwell  upon  a  lesson  which  is  so  plain, 
H.  not  only  suppressed  her  joy,  but  feigned  grief,  and 
then  adopted  other  means  to  avert  the  penalty  she  ex- 
pected from  me. 

It  is  evident  that  this  line  of  operations  brings  out 
various  direct  conflicts  of  egoistic  and  altruistic  impulses. 
So  clear  is  this,  that  the  proper  pedagogical  method  of 
correction  in  such  cases  would  seem  to  be  that  of  strength- 
ening the  latter  impulses  over  against  the  selfish  ones. 
But  that  aside,  the  conflict  is  itself  fruitful  to  us  in  en- 
deavouring to  trace  the  child's  development.  Inasmuch 
as  the  alter  thought  is  involved  in  the  bonds  which  the 
child  thus  learns  to  manipulate,  he  must  have  emotional 
impulses  of  a  generous  kind,  to  some  degree,  in  all  his 
use  of  the  social  bond  for  his  own  purposes.  And  these 
impulses  in  turn  grow  strong  enough  to  lead  him  on  occa- 

1  Sully  gives  instances  of  the  various  excuses  which  children  invent  to 
avoid  complying  with  a  command  (lot.  fit.,  p.  270  f.). 


Personal  Intelligence  273 

sion  —  and  in  some  children  this  occasion  is  very  frequent, 
as  against  the  selfish  use  already  spoken  of  —  to  use 
the  same  means  to  accomplish  purposes  of  truth  and 
generosity.  The  imitative  child  will  find  out  new  ways 
of  being  docile  and  good,  and  will  often  surprise  his 
parents  with  his  early  tendency  to  self-reproach  and 
confession  directly  in  the  teeth  of  his  fear  of  penalty 
and  expectation  of  suffering.1  All  this  must  be  accred- 
ited to  the  growth  of  the  alter  thought  and  its  emotional 
value,  as  expressed  in  action. 

175.  Then  on  both  sides — as  concerning  his  selfish 
actions  and  also  as  concerning  his  generous  actions  — 
he  grows  more  his  own  master,  and  makes  bolder  excur- 
sions into  the  realm  of  social  manipulation.  The  use 
of  the  social  bond  which  I  have  described  as  negative, 
tends  to  enable  the  child  to  escape  unwelcome  events 
and  realities ;  he  makes  the  same  use  of  the  social  bond 
also  to  secure  positive  results. 

He  suggests  terms  in  the  series,  in  order  to  arouse 
states  of  mind  in  his  social  fellows  which  will  be  fruit- 
ful in  good  things  to  himself;  and  he  does  this,  again, 
in  both  of  two  ways:  (i)  in  the  suppression  of  the 
real  facts  of  his  knowledge  —  the  way  of  negative  mis- 
representation ;  and  (2)  by  putting  forward  suggestions 
of  a  positive  kind  which  he  thinks  will  mislead.  All 
this  follows  so  evidently  from  the  method  of  his  growth 
into  the  use  of  social  relationships  that  I  need  not  dwell 
upon  it  in  detail  before  the  next  event  to  be  signalized, 
which  shows  it  in  its  fullest  illustration,  i.e.,  the  beginning 
of  the  use  of  language  for  consciously  social  purposes. 

1  As  when  a  child  comes  and  asks  to  be  punished  for  a  fault  which  he  is 
sure  has  not  been  witnessed  by  any  one. 
T 


274  Hi*  Intelligence 

176.  In  language,  as  we  have  seen,  the  child  finds 
ready  for  him  a  system  of  nets-for-thought,  actually  in 
use  about  him.  He  sees,  among  the  first  uses  of  speech, 
the  way  others  convey  their  meanings  to  one  another ; 
how  an  emotion,  an  action,  any  social  expression,  passes 
from  one  person  to  another  with  the  passage  of  a  word. 
So  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  the  beginnings  which 
he  makes  in  the  employment  of  social  suggestion  for 
certain  more  or  less  remote  ends,  should  be  realized  in 
his  speech.  He  has  more  than  an  imitative  impulse  to 
make  progress  in  his  speaking.  He  has  that  certainly ; 
but  besides  he  has,  in  all  likelihood,  also  an  hereditary 
tendency  in  the  same  direction.  And  as  soon  as  his 
sense  of  the  possible  use  of  social  means  to  personal 
ends  gets  at  all  advanced  by  his  employment  of  facial 
expression,  active  attitudes  of  body,  etc.,  he  finds  that 
most  extraordinary  instrument  of  the  same  utility  in  his 
hands — or  rather  in  his  mouth — the  forms  of  language. 

Here  it  is,  I  think,  that  all  the  progress  which  the  child 
has  been  making  in  his  personal  growth,  as  a  being  with 
the  thought  of  ego  and  alter,  with  tendencies  to  the 
series  of  actions  which  these  personal  thoughts  stimu- 
late, with  all  the  groping  after  self-possession  in  the 
relations  of  his  social  life,  —  here  it  is  that  all  these 
things  fall  together  in  a  great  insight  achieved,  again, 
through  action.  When  he  speaks  and  others  understand, 
then  he  has  meanings ;  then  he  is  using  symbols ;  then 
his  plots  to  catch  social  influences  and  hold  them  to- 
gether in  forms  of  personal  utility  of  both  the  selfish 
and  generous  types,  become  adequate  to  the  purposes 
of  real  reflection.  I  think,  when  the  child  tells  a  lie  of 
reflective  import  to  lead  another  astray,  —  that  is,  with  a 


Personal  Intelligence  275 

social  motive,  not  merely  by  mistake,  through  misunder- 
standing, or  from  concrete  association,  —  then  at  any 
rate,  however  it  may  have  been  adumbrated  in  his  earlier 
struggles,  he  takes  his  place  as  a  social  factor  on  the  plane 
on  which  all  intelligently  social  activities  are  displayed. 

This  develops  through  speech  with  its  verbal  symbol- 
ism ;  the  general  province  of  speech  pointed  out  above,1 
where  it  was  considered  as  an  aid  to  invention.  Here 
we  find  that  the  invention  which  it  aids  is  also  social. 
The  child  becomes  thinker  of  social  thought ;  and  all  his 
later  attainments,  from  the  planning  of  a  snowball-fight 
to  the  occupancy  of  the  chair  of  the  Speaker  of  the 
House,  is  a  matter  of  detail.2  He  now  illustrates  the  func- 
tion of  private  intelligence  in  social  development ;  namely, 
as  tJdnkingthe  definite,  communicable,  and  imitable  thoughts 
which  furnish  the  matter  of  social  organization? 

177.  The  method  of  development,  on  the  intellectual 
side,  has  led  us  to  see  just  what  relation  the  two  classes 
of  ends  which  we  call  selfish  and  altruistic  have  to  each 
other.  And  it  is  interesting  to  recall  the  relation  be- 
tween the  impulses  to  self-assertion  and  generosity  in 
the  earlier  period,  in  view  of  the  further  statement  of 
these  opposed  tendencies  now.  We  found  that  the  emo- 
tional states  exhibiting  themselves  in  aggressive  actions 
of  an  instinctive  kind  were  the  intrinsic  outcome  of  the 

1  Chap.  IV.,  §  i. 

2  The  following  illustrations  of  this  all  occurred  in  five  minutes'  conversation 
when  H.  was  just  four  years  old.     "  Baby  mustn't  have  the  pictures,  she  wants 
to  tear  them  —  that's  what  she  wants,  mama."  —  "  Oh,  mama !  baby  has  the 
red  book  that  papa  said  I  couldn't  have  —  shall  I   take  it  away  ? "  — "  I'm 
going  to  table  with  you,  mama  ;   but  baby  hears  and  she'll  want  to  go  too  — 
so  we  won't  talk  about  it  now,  mama."     These  instances  also  illustrate  the 
intelligent  use  of  the  social  bond  for  private  ends  pointed  out  in  Sect.  173. 

8  This  is  carried  further  in  Chap.  XII.,  on  •  Social  Matter  and  Process.' 


276  His  Intelligence 

child's  nature  as  a  creature  of  hereditary  adaptation ;  and 
the  same  is  true  on  the  side  of  the  sympathetic  impulses 
and  emotions.  These  latter  represent  the  sort  of  ances- 
tral experience  which  involved  co-operation  and  communal 
life,  as  in  the  family  circle.  Both,  we  found,  were  equally 
primitive ;  and  both,  inasmuch  as  they  did  not  involve 
reasoning  or  self-determination  of  any  kind,  equally  rea- 
sonable for  the  child  to  do ;  for  in  the  case  of  each  the 
concept  of  the  reasonable  did  not  get  application  at 
all. 

We  now  find  a  similar  state  of  things  at  this  higher 
or  social  stage  of  the  use  of  intelligence.  The  child's 
actions  have  become  reasonable  in  so  far  as  they  are  out- 
come of  a  process  of  personal  self-conscious  adaptation 
to  social  ends ;  and  so  now  the  question  as  to  what  acts 
are  reasonable  for  him  to  perform,  is  a  legitimate  ques- 
tion. But  the  answer  that  we  see,  as  the  outcome  of 
the  child's  growth,  still  requires  us  to  say  that  neither 
of  the  two  kinds  of  action  is  reasonable  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  other.  For  the  thought  which  the  child  thinks 
leads  to  the  type  of  action  suitable  to  the  realization  of 
the  end  which  this  thought  represents ;  and  this  is  true 
both  of  the  thought  of  the  ego-self,  with  the  train  of 
selfish  performances  which  it  stimulates,  and  equally  of 
the  alter-self  with  its  train  of  altruistic  performances.  In 
the  one  case,  selfishness  becomes  reasonable  to  the  child ; 
and  in  the  other  case,  generosity  becomes  reasonable.  It 
would  be  unreasonable  —  in  any  adequate  psychological 
sense  of  that  term  —  for  the  child  to  be  selfish  when  his 
thought  of  the  self-ego  is  not  the  dominating  factor  in 
the  emotional  and  impulsive  state  which  leads  him  to 
act ;  and  it  would  be  equally  unreasonable  for  him  not  to 


Personal  Intelligence  277 

be  selfish  when  it  does.  His  action  conforms  to  the  pat- 
tern of  the  present  thought. 

But  even  at  this  stage,  before  we  pass  on  into  the 
development  of  the  ethical  and  so-called  'ideal'  states 
of  mind  as  such,  we  should  note  the  great  complexity 
of  the  processes  involved.  Every  dominating  thought 
is  a  complex  thing,  a  compromise,  an  adjustment.  For 
the  thought  of  the  ego  is,  as  we  clearly  saw,  in  the 
main  the  same  in  content  as  the  thought  of  the  alter; 
the  differences  are  more  external  and  extrinsic  than  the 
similarities.  Given  emergencies  in  life  when  the  human 
as  such  is  assailed,  when  our  esprit  de  corps  is  called 
out,  —  as  we  see  it  called  out  in  the  child's  conscious- 
ness sometimes,  —  and  we  learn  that  '  blood  is  thicker  than 
water.'  The  self -notion  rises,  in  all  its  generic  sublimity, 
and  the  differences  of  personal  quality,  habitation,  physi- 
cal conformation,  etc.,  disappear.  So  the  state  of  mind, 
in  each  act  for  self  or  for  another,  is  really  a  thing  of 
emphasis  rather  than  of  essential  variety  in  the  thought 
process.  The  selfish  act  can  be  turned  away  by  a  gener- 
ous suggestion.  The  soft  answer  brings  out  the  balance  of 
the  altruistic  factor,  and  causes  the  motive  to  wrath  to 
turn  its  back.  Mere  physical  conditions  are  often  enough 
to  throw  the  balance  on  one  side  or  on  the  other,  in  this 
delicate  adjustment  of  claims.  Or  a  personal  presence 
may,  simply  by  its  intensity  of  reality,  drive  out  a  wicked 
intention,  which  the  mere  memory  of  the  same  intended 
victim  did  not  suffice  to  keep  down.  How  many  crimes 
are  planned  among  the  images  of  imagination,  which 
never  get  executed  in  the  realm  of  fact;  and  alas,  how 
many  virtuous  actions  also  ! 

The  real  antithesis  between  reason  and  unreason,  there- 


278  His  Intelligence 

fore,  here  as  earlier,  does  not  cut  through  consciousness 
at  the  line  between  the  selfish  and  the  generous,  although 
in  life  the  practical  considerations  are  often  so  momen- 
tous that  we  assume  that  it  does.  Either  of  them  may  be 
reasonable  on  occasion,  as  we  saw  above.  The  real  line 
lies  between  deliberation,  reflection,  and  the  lack  of  it. 
The  question  is  in  each  case  one  of  action :  was  there 
sufficient  balance  of  tendency,  sufficient  self-continence, 
sufficient  motor  unity,  to  reflect  a  '  reasonable '  show  of 
intelligence  ?  Or  was  the  action  on  the  other  hand  so 
dominated  by  suggestion,  so  led  by  the  haste  of  the 
crowd,  by  the  quick  reaction  of  an  emotional  storm,  by 
the  sharp  onset  of  a  paralyzing  desire,  that  no  clear  and 
steadily  embraced  end  was  present  at  all  ?  That  is  the 
true  distinction  between  what  is  reasonable  and  what  is 
not. 

178.  Then  we  find,  also,  when  we  recall  the  social  func- 
tion of  the  intelligence,  —  the  uses  which  the  intelligence 
makes  of  the  social  suggestions  and  informations  which 
come  in  its  way,  —  that  these  suggestions  may  be  turned 
to  the  profit  of  either  of  the  two  kinds  of  reasonable  action. 
Just  as  it  is  sometimes  reasonable  or  intelligent  for  the 
child  to  act  for  himself,  in  a  selfish  way,  and  then  on 
another  occasion  it  is  equally  reasonable  for  him  to  act 
for  another,  in  a  generous  way ;  so  either  the  one  or  the 
other  of  these  kinds  of  intelligent  action  may  make  use 
of  social  factors  as  means  to  its  end.  The  child  may 
excite  his  father  with  the  conscious  end  that  he  may  join 
with  him  in  a  romp  which  is  pleasurable  for  himself,  the 
child ;  or  he  may  do  so  to  the  end  that  the  father  may 
observe  and  clothe  a  poor  boy  whose  hands  are  blue  with 
cold.  The  latter,  again,  is  as  reasonable  an  action  on  the 


Personal  Intelligence  279 

part  of  the  child  as  the  former  is.  And,  further,  when 
these  factors  come  into  conflict  —  when,  for  example,  the 
child  wishes  to  hand  over  his  own  gloves  that  the  beggar's 
hands  may  be  warm,  while  his  own  grow  cold,  —  that  is 
reasonable  as  well;  it  shows  the  dominance  of  the  alter 
thought  and  the  active  function  which  its  dominance 
secures ;  to  do  the  opposite,  would  be  also  reasonable  on 
occasion,  since  it  would  involve  the  dominance  of  the  ego 
thought.  If  the  father  thinks  it  is  unreasonable  for  the 
boy  to  give  the  beggar  his  gloves,  it  is  because  the  father 
is  not  thinking  the  son's  thought;  the  only  way  he  can 
make  it  seem  unreasonable  to  the  boy  is  to  secure  in  the 
boy  the  dominance  of  a  different  self-thought,  either  by 
showing  him  the  grounds  for  that  thought,  as  they  lie  in 
his  own  mind,  or  by  the  force  of  direct  suggestion  upon 
the  child,  as  by  command,  example,  injunction,  etc. 

1/9.  If  these  things  are  reasonable,  then  the  function 
of  the  reason  is  to  accomplish  these  things.  And  we  are 
now  able  to  formulate  a  general  conclusion  as  to  the  place  of 
the  intelligence  in  social  development.  The  complexes  of 
knowledge  which  the  individual  builds  up  are  what,  in 
the  earlier  chapters,  we  called  '  inventions ' :  the  putting 
together  of  the  elements  of  presentation  so  as  to  reach 
new  interpretations  on  the  basis  of  them.  But  the  differ- 
ence between  the  inventions  which  involve  only  or  mainly 
the  forces  and  facts  of  nature,  and  those  which  involve 
social  forces,  are  somewhat  sharply  marked.  There  is 
no  invention  without  some  social  reference ;  we  have  seen 
that  social  reference  is  made  by  the  inventor  himself  in 
every  case.  But  when  he  is  dealing  with  the  objective 
world,  his  materials,  the  actual  cast  of  the  knowledge- 
elements  in  his  thought,  are  socially  neutral  in  themselves. 


280  His  Intelligence 

But  not  so  with  the  line  of  inventions  which  we  have 
been  tracing  in  this  chapter.  The  child  uses  the  self- 
notion  at  every  step.  He  thinks  with  subjective  mate- 
rials ;  and  his  knowledges  are,  in  each  case,  interpretations 
of  the  way  he  expects  persons  to  think  and  act.  So  he  is 
now  dealing  with  social  material — suggestions,  actions, 
words,  etc.  —  as  such.  The  function  of  the  intelligence  in 
his  social  life  is  accordingly  this :  //  uses  social  materials 
and  interprets  them.  Each  individual  in  society  has  in 
himself  a  more  or  less  adequate  picture  of  the  social  play 
going  on  around  him.  He  acts  with  reference  to  this 
play.  He  conforms  his  own  actions  to  his  expectation 
that  others  will  understand  him ;  and  he  directs  his  actions 
with  the  thought  that  he  understands  others. 

Intelligence,  therefore,  in  its  social  activity,  has  for  its 
function  invention  ivith  social  material.  This  gives  it  a 
twofold  importance,  both  aspects  of  which  we  have  now 
considered,  (r)  It  is  a  means  of  the  individual's  own 
growth  and  an  instrument  for  his  use  (Sects.  173  and 
179).  And  (2)  it  creates  the  thoughts  which  have  cur- 
rency in  society  and  become  embodied  in  its  institutions 
(Sect.  176).  In  this  latter  function,  it  has  to  do  with 
co-operation  as  such.  It  is  social  co-operation  become 
aware  of  itself.  It  represents,  therefore,  when  its  effects 
in  the  body  social  are  considered  as  a  whole,  an  engine  of 
extraordinary  and  critical  power.  We  have  only  to  con- 
sider the  mutuality  of  the  exercise  of  intelligence  in  a 
community  to  see  what  intricacy  its  use  may  be  expected 
to  bring  about  in  the  history  of  social  progress.  I  may 
be  allowed  to  dwell  upon  this  thought  at  a  little  more 
length. 

1 80.    The   conception  of    mutuality  or  reciprocity  has. 


Personal  Intelligence  281 

far-reaching  implications.  It  has  pressed  in  upon  us  at 
every  stage  of  our  inquiry.  The  family  instincts  are 
reciprocal ;  and  their  effectiveness  depends  directly  on 
this  element.  Each  instinct  is  shaped  to  fit  into  the  same 
instinct  in  other  individuals.  This  is  what  co-operation 
means.  It  is  the  essential  meaning  of  family  and  gre- 
garious community  life.  Again,  in  the  reactions  of  an 
emotional  kind  which  we  have  considered  —  modesty, 
sympathy,  play,  etc.  —  the  result  is  what  it  is  because 
of  their  generality  in  the  species  and  their  mutual  exercise 
by  all  the  individuals.  The  very  existence,  indeed,  of  the 
phenomena  is  conditioned  upon  it.  So  always  of  all 
social  equipment. 

The  intelligence,  to  be  socially  available,  must  also  be 
a  thing  of  mutual  exercise.  But  it  is  not  so  evidently 
so;  and  it  is  well  to  return  upon  our  description  of  the 
social  element  in  the  work  of  the  genius,  to  point  out  one 
of  the  phases  of  the  mutuality.  We  found  that  the  law 
of  social  heredity  brought  the  genius  under  the  require- 
ment that  he  have  the  kind  of  sanity  of  judgment  which 
represents,  in  the  main,  the  social  judgment  which  is 
'going'  in  his  time  and  place.  His  intellectual  endow- 
ment, unless  it  is  to  go  to  waste  from  a  social  point  of 
view,  must  not  show  too  great  a  variation  from  the  stand- 
ard or  level  which  the  social  judgment  erects.  This  in- 
troduces a  social  element,  an  element  of  mutuality,  or 
reciprocity,  into  the  very  endowment  which  we  call  reason 
or  intelligence.  The  lines  of  development  of  judgment 
itself,  on  its  aesthetic  and  teleological  side,  are  lines  of 
common  action ;  and  in  his  very  preferences  the  actor  is 
moving  in  paths  of  least  social  no  less  than  least  personal 
resistance.  In  short,  every  individual  in  society  is  in  a 


282  His  Intelligence 

measure  —  and  the  measure  frequently  measures  his  com- 
petence and  influence  —  the  organ  of  the  social  movement 
which  conserves  tradition,  sets  public  opinion,  and  reacts 
upon  his  sense  of  values  and  upon  his  preferences,  inciting 
him  to  work,  think,  fight  for  institution,  country,  and  social 
ideal. 

It  is  on  account  of  this  more  recondite  and  intimate 
element  of  mutuality  that  the  individual  welcomes  the 
more  open  and  practical  reciprocity  of  suggestion  which 
he  actually  finds  in  the  environment,  all  through  the 
course  of  his  personal  growth.  We  have  seen  the  extent 
of  this  latter.  He  finds  the  lessons  of  the  actions  of 
others  actually  available  and  convertible  into  his  thought 
of  self;  he  finds  it  possible  to  understand  what  the 
actions  of  others  mean ;  he  is  able  to  anticipate  their 
conduct  by  happy  guesses,  drawn  from  analogies  of  his 
own  feeling ;  and  he  finally  comes  to  depend  so  confi- 
dently upon  the  constancy  and  regularity  of  the  simi- 
larities between  his  own  inner  life  and  the  life  of  others 
that  he  is  able  to  bend  their  actions  to  his  own  personal 
ends.  This  has  now  been  sufficiently  described. 

§  4.    Social  Intelligence 

181.  We  should  remember  that  there  is  always  a  tradi- 
tion element,  and,  besides,  a  personal  element,  in  every 
situation  of  social  import  into  which  the  individual  comes. 
The  tradition  element  represents  the  use  which  others  have 
made,  or  are  making,  of  their  intelligence  as  its  gains  are 
h inded  down;  the  personal  element  represents  the  use 
which  the  individual  is  making  of  his.  And  in  the  mass 
of  suggestive  copies,  rules,  conventions,  styles,  etc.,  which 


Social  Intelligence  283 

sum  up,  in  any  particular  case,  the  tradition  element, 
there  is  also  the  second  or  personal  element  not  his  own, 
corresponding  to  the  particular  personal  source  through 
which  the  tradition  is  administered  to  the  individual. 
There  are  differences  of  temperament,  character,  personal 
mood,  methods  of  thought,  among  the  associates  of  each 
individual,  and  to  these  he  is  keenly  alive  ;  they  tend  to 
check  his  action  and  to  secure  differential  attitudes  when 
his  action  is  finally  led  forth.  This  leads,  in  the  child, 
to  a  further  development  of  certain  ideal  selves  in  his 
thought,  whose  origin,  in  the  conflicting  phases  of  sugges- 
tion, we  have  already  seen  when  discussing  the  origin 
of  the  ethical  sense.  This  progress  of  his  is  of  essential 
moment,  both  in  his  personal  development  and  in  the 
social  complex  in  which  he  plays  a  part. 

The  sense  to  which  he  now  attains  may  be  likened 
crudely  to  a  composite  photograph.  The  variety  of  per- 
sonalities about  him,  each  impressing  him  with  some  one 
or  more  peculiarities,  exaggerations,  deficiencies,  inconsist- 
encies, or  law-observing  regularities,  gradually  leave  upon 
him  a  certain  common  impression  which,  while  getting  ap- 
plication to  all  personalities  as  such,  yet  has  to  have  sup- 
plementing in  the  case  of  any  particular  individual.  I 
have  traced  above,  in  treating  of  the  ethical  sense,  certain 
of  the  emotional  tendencies  which  this  general  personality 
arouses ;  and  it  will  recur  later  on  when  we  come  to  con- 
sider the  sentiments  which  the  social  agent  brings  to  his 
life-tasks.  It  is  enough  for  us  now  to  see  that  this 
general  notion  of  personality  does  arise  in  the  child's 
mind,  and  to  inquire  into  the  method  of  his  intelligent 
use  of  it. 

1 32.    He  'ejects'  it  into  all  the   fellows   of   his   social 


284  His  Intelligence 

group.  It  becomes  then  a  general  alter,  a  sort  of  speaking 
social  companion  on  whose  characteristics  as  a  thinking, 
feeling,  approving,  criticising  agent  he  stumbles  whenever 
he  meets  his  fellow-man.  And,  further,  he  cannot  sever 
this  bond  nor  escape  its  hold ;  for  his  thought  of  his  own 
ego  is  always  an  illustration  of  its  reality,  just  as  much 
as  is  any  other  person.  The  latter  he  may  avoid ;  but  his 
own  presence  he  cannot  avoid;  nor  can  he  rid  himself 
of  the  thought  of  himself.  So  the  thought  of  himself 
stands  also  for  the  thought  of  the  general  'other'  of  society; 
and  he  must  share  the  field  with  him,  hear  his  opinions, 
feel  reciprocal  emotions  with  him,  etc.,  whenever  he  thinks. 
This  shadowy  being,  the  general  self,  is  his  other  in  the 
realest  possible  way.  We  call  the  evidence  which  we  have 
of  its  presence  '  public  opinion,'  Zeitgeist,  etc.,  and  we  find 
ourselves  actually  responding  to  its  existence  by  having  a 
great  and  powerful  set  of  emotions  directed  toward  it. 

The  practical  value  of  this  thought  of  general  person- 
ality, in  our  every-day  life,  shows  itself  whenever  the  atti- 
tude of  the  ego  thought  is  at  variance  with  this  general 
thought.  The  discrepancy  is  felt  most  acutely.  It  is 
during  the  formation  of  this  contrast  that  the  child  begins 
to  show  those  states  of  mind  which  arise  in  consequence 
of  his  subsequent  reflection  on  his  own  actions.  All  the 
states  covered  by  the  terms  '  repentance,'  '  self-reproach,' 
'  personal  regret,'  '  personal  disappointment,' '  remorse,'  etc., 
arise  then,  and  must  arise  then.  They  could  not  arise 
sooner,  because  the  child  did  not  have  sooner  the  antithe- 
sis in  the  thought  he  thinks  which  might  issue  in  the 
double  stream  of  personal  tendency  which  consciousness 
shows  at  these  times.  It  is  a  new  stage  of  thought  before 
it  can  be  a  new  stage  of  emotion. 


Social  Intelligence  285 

183.  It  is  also  a  new  stage  in  the  management  of  the 
social  forces.  It  is  the  child's  deepening  hold  upon  these 
that  gives  intelligence  its  place  and  power.  So  the  other 
aspects  of  this  growth  in  reflective  thought  may  be  passed 
by  now,  in  order  that  we  may  look  more  closely  at  this. 

The  child  applies  his  intelligence  directly  in  making  use 
of  this  thought  of  a  general  self ;  he  uses  it  as  means 
to  his  own  ends,  and  also  as  end  when  it  suits  him.  This 
appears  from  certain  situations  which  I  may  mention,  know- 
ing that  the  observer  of  children  may  readily  verify  them. 

The  child's  intercourse  with  other  children  shows  direct 
attempts,  on  his  part,  to  assume  the  part  of  lawgiver,  and 
hold  his  playfellows  up  to  the  requirements  of  the  code 
which  he  finds  it  possible  to  prescribe.  This  code  is  the 
application  to  each  situation,  as  it  arises,  of  the  general 
sense  of  the  requirements  of  the  ideal  or  social  self,  as  far 
as  there  are  in  his  actual  experience  analogies  upon  which 
he  can  go.  He  repeats  the  current  moral  maxims  of  the 
family  life  whenever  he  thinks  they  get  application.  For 
example,  I  am  accustomed  to  keep  in  check  the  tendency 
of  my  children  to  hasty  action  and  intellectual  guessing 
by  telling  them  in  critical  junctures  or  situations  —  such 
as  the  opening  of  a  package  after  a  trip  to  the  city  —  to 
'wait  and  see.'  This  became  a  formula  to  the  younger  of 
the  children  in  her  fourth  year.  She  not  only  learned,  in 
a  measure,  the  uselessness  of  haste,  but  she  took  my 
place,  in  the  games  and  on  many  more  serious  occasions, 
and  urged  upon  the  other  children,  nurse,  etc.,  to  'wait 
and  see.'  It  was  her  sense  of  the  proper  attitude  of 
a  wise  and  judicious  personality,  in  anxious  and  exciting 
situations,  to  await  the  outcome  with  calmness ;  and  the 
way  she  brought  the  injunction  in  for  the  benefit  of  the 


286  His  Intelligence 

other  children  was  amusing  in  the  extreme.  This  example 
shows  the  general  tendency  of  which  I  speak.  No  sooner 
does  an  aspect  of  personal  behaviour,  shown  in  word,  in- 
junction, suggestion,  or  action,  get  some  generalization,  so 
as  to  apply  to  a  variety  of  instances,  than  the  child  seizes 
upon  it  and  makes  it  a  weapon  of  social  use.1  Under  the 
show  of  benevolence  the  child  often  hides  little  intrigues. 
H.,  when  five  years  of  age,  hid  her  own  pictures  and  then 
took  her  sister's  in  order  to  '  arrange '  them  for  her. 

The  employment  of  such  formulas  for  the  securing  of 
personal  advantage  over  others  is  very  common.  Chil- 
dren playing  together  will  often  themselves  suggest  the 
device  of  'taking  turns,'  in  order  to  satisfy  the  sense  of 
justice  and  equal  rights  which  is  rising  within  them.  But 
I  have  known  one  of  mine  to  go  further.  H.  has  often 
(fifth  to  sixth  year)  secured  the  ownership  of  an  article  of 
play  by  the  device  of  suggesting  that  she  have  the  first 
turn,  and  then  afterwards  suggesting  that  the  game  be 
changed,  or  that  the  sides  be  reversed.  Moreover,  a  child 
of  five  or  six  years  will  often  take  advantage  of  a  younger 
companion's  limited  insight  into  personality,  or  of  the  other's 
susceptibility  to  suggestions  of  desire,  by  placing  a  loud 
verbal  value  on  an  article  which  he  does  not  want,  in  order 
to  arouse  the  sense  of  value  in  the  younger  child,  and  thus, 
by  leading  off  the  scent,  secure  the  possession  of  some 
coveted  thing  from  which  the  attention  of  the  playmate  is 
diverted.  In  such  cases  —  and  there  are  innumerable  of 
them  in  any  nursery  where  there  are  several  children 

1  For  example,  when  the  child  legislates  for  his  little  brother,  hoping  to 
profit  by  it;  refuses  to  take  fruit,  etc.,  first,  knowing  the  others  will  leave  tht 
larger  ones  ;  makes  the  plea  that  he  did  this  or  that  '  in  fun  ' ;  takes  advantage 
of  his  mother's  pity,  charity,  etc.,  by  exciting  them  artificially  or  unduly. 


Social  Intelligence  287 

regularly  together  —  we  have  not  only  the  growth  in  one 
of  the  children,  the  eldest  say,  of  a  sense  of  the  general 
attributes  of  character,  the  essentials  of  character  as  such, 
but  also  a  remarkably  acute  estimate  of  the  state  of  the 
other  children's  minds  in  this  respect.  A  will  know  what 
B  thinks  of  character  and  of  A's  character ;  and  A  will 
act  toward  B  with  insight  into  the  limitations  of  B's  sense 
of  A's  character.  The  moral  adjustment  of  my  two  children 
to  each  other  as  they  are  both  growing  up  into  the  sense 
of  the  general  self,  one  some  way  in  advance  of  the 
other,  is  a  source  of  great  instruction.  As  the  elder 
grows  to  understand  character  better,  she  practises  her 
new  knowledge  constantly  on  her  sister.  But  this  very 
practice,  by  which  the  elder  often  seeks  to  circumvent 
the  younger,  is  an  influence  of  pedagogical  value  to  the 
little  one.  Her  lessons  in  the  meaning  of  personality,  in 
the  use  of  intelligence,  in  the  ways  that  people  may  be 
used  for  personal  ends,  are  set  by  all  the  childish  schemes 
of  her  sister,  instead  of  by  the  examples  of  her  elders,  for 
which  she  would  otherwise  have  to  wait.  Here  is  one  of 
the  great  benefits  to  the  child  of  many  companions  and 
constant  companionship. 

184.  Another  phase  of  the  same  class  of  situations  is 
brought  out  when  we  inquire  into  the  two  forms — egoistic 
and  altruistic  —  which  the  child's  use  of  his  intelligence  in 
this  way  takes  on.  From  the  instances  which  I  have  cited 
immediately  above,  and  from  those  cases  given  earlier, 
in  which  the  methods  of  the  child's  lies  were  illustrated, 
it  would  seem  that  the  egoistic  use  of  the  intelligence 
is  more  striking  than  the  altruistic.  And  in  spite  of 
what  was  said  above  to  the  effect  that  the  two  personal 
attitudes  are  on  a  basis  of  equality,  and  that  as  far  as 


288  His  Intelligence 

reasonable  action  is  concerned,  both  are  equally  reasonable 
or  unreasonable,  we  find  appearances  taking  on  a  some- 
what different  form  at  this  further  stage  in  the  child's 
progress.  It  is  evident  that  even  in  the  earlier  stage,  in 
which  both  of  the  attitudes  are  unreflective,  one  of  them 
might,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be  the  prevailing  or  usual  one, 
especially  if  there  were  no  adequate  expression  of  the 
other  in  the  situations  of  the  personal  environment.  I 
think  the  egoistic  impulses  do  tend  more  constantly  to 
fill  consciousness,  even  at  the  unreflective  period,  since 
the  child  is  so  new  to  thought,  and  the  trend  of  the 
organic  period  from  which  he  has  so  freshly  emerged  is 
toward  the  preservation  and  satisfaction  of  his  private 
tendencies.  This  drift  has  to  be  in  some  degree  overcome 
before  his  thought  of  the  alter  can  come  so  strongly  to 
consciousness  as  to  lead  to  regular  self-denial.  The 
organism  secures  this,  in  a  measure,  as  we  have  seen,  by 
the  provision  of  organic  sympathy  and  modesty ;  and  yet, 
except  when  these  are  actually  discharging,  the  bent  of 
action  seems  to  be  toward  those  forms  of  action  which,  in 
their  reflex  effects,  tend  to  keep  the  thought  of  the  pri- 
vate self  more  prominently  before  the  contemplation  of 
the  budding  individual.  So  we  should  expect  to  find  the 
progress  of  the  child  toward  generosity  and  justice  and 
mutual  fairness,  in  the  use  of  that  engine  of  means  to 
ends,  the  intelligence,  somewhat  handicapped  by  the  less 
developed  forms  of  action  which  he  inherits  from  his  own 
personal  past. 

This  is  borne  out,  in  several  ways,  I  think,  in  the  actual 
behaviour  of  children  at  this  difficult  period,  when  the  ten- 
dencies toward  real  personality  are  just  beginning  to  show 
themselves. 


Social  Intelligence  289 

(1)  The  child's  inventions  in  the  management  of  other 
personalities    and   of    social    forces   are    prompted    more 
largely  by  his  sense  of  personal  advantage  or  disadvan- 
tage.    It   is   true    of   all   invention,   that   it   is   the    most 
urgent    situations   which   bring   out    the    most    effective 
thought ;  and  this  is  the  case  with  the  child.     Sympathy 
may  be  abolished  by  the  simple  expedient  of  withdrawing 
the  gaze,  or  refusing  to  attend.     We  adults  know  this. 
But  personal  pain  cannot  be  escaped  so  easily.     The  child 
finds  his  personal  collisions  with  others  vital  and  pungent 
with  pain  and  pleasure.     It  is  his  own  interest  which  is 
so  often  in  the  balance.     It  is  not  so  moving  when  it  is 
the   interest   of   another   for   whom    his   sympathies   are 
excited.     So  the  former  case  has  an  urgency  which  brings 
out  his  violent  and  resisting,  or  evasive,  or  scheming,  or 
dissembling  actions,  on  occasion,  as  well  as  his  truthfully 
direct  and  franker  ones.     We  do  not  often  find  the  child 
scheming   to   secure   an    advantage    for   the    sister    and 
brother  as  he  schemes  for  himself.     When  he  does,  it  is 
normal,  to  be  sure ;   but  it  rather  surprises  us.     Differ- 
ent children  differ  in  this  respect,  and   cases  sometimes 
seem  to  show  that  a  child  may  be  more  active  on  the  side 
of  generosity  than  of  self-aggression ;  yet  generally  it  is 
the  contrary ;  and  the  fact  simply  shows  that  while  both 
attitudes  are  equally  possible,  and  from  the  child's  point 
of   view   equally   reasonable,  yet   the   selfish    attitude  is 
liable  to  prevail.1 

(2)  There  is  reason  for  this,  also,  in  the  method  of  his 
progress  toward  ethical  and   social   standing.      He  must 
be  personally   efficient   in  order  to   be    socially  efficient. 
Man  must  live  and  accumulate  for  himself  and  his  family 

1  See  the  instance  of  an  inventive  social  lie  given  above,  Sect.  71. 


290  His  Intelligence 

before  he  can  be  a  public  servant.  And  in  the  child's  life 
this  means  that  he  is  to  become  a  man,  at  all  events, 
whatever  else  he  may  become.  He  must  grow  up  to  be 
an  individual ;  that  is  incumbent  on  him  at  all  hazards ; 
what  more  he  may  attain  in  the  way  of  being  a  good  or 
wise  or  social  individual  is  based  on  this  first  presuppo- 
sition. 

(3)  This  is  reflected,  moreover,  in  the  movement  by 
which  his  inner  development  proceeds.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  we  found  the  child  going  through  three  stages 
of  personal  thought,  called  'protective'  (his  sense  of  others 
before  he  distinguishes  between  them  and  himself),  then 
'  subjective '  (his  sense  of  himself  as  distinguished  from 
others),  then  '  ejective '  (the  sense  of  others  as  like  him- 
self). These  three  thoughts,  we  had  occasion  to  say,  are 
not  strictly  chronological ;  the  dialectic  movement  be- 
tween the  first  and  the  second,  and  between  the  second 
and  the  third,  being  a  constant  process  all  through  life. 
But  the  logical  order  is  that  named ;  and  it  is  also  a 
chronological  order  when  looked  at  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  accretions  which  the  child  constantly  makes 
to  the  thought  of  self.  The  new  elements  which  he  ac- 
quires from  the  environment  must  be  first  projectivc 
before  he  can  duplicate  them  in  his  thought  of  himself ; 
that  is,  before  he  can  realize  them  subjectively.  And 
then  they  cannot  be  ejective  until  after  he  has  made  them 
his  own  in  the  subjective  way.  So  there  is  a  real  chrono- 
logical movement  which  takes  these  three  phases. 

The  point  of  importance  in  this  connection  is  that,  in 
this  quasi-chronological  movement,  the  thought  of  the 
subjective  self  stands  midway  between  the  other  two 
thoughts.  It  is  the  nucleus  of  which  he  is  permanently 


Social  Intelligence  291 

possessed.  It  is  the  measure  by  which  he  tests  persons. 
The  unknown  elements  of  personal  suggestion  which  claim 
his  attention  must  have  already  the 'signs  which  he  finds 
in  his  own  thought ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  known 
elements  of  personality  which  he  attributes  to  those  about 
him  must  have  gone  through  the  testing  processes  of  his 
own  more  or  less  experimental  action.  So  there  is  a  con- 
stant return  upon  his  own  ego  thought  from  both  the  poles 
of  this  two-membered  relationship.  This  being  the  case, 
we  should  not  be  surprised  that  his  sense  of  his  own  exist- 
ence, rights,  appetites,  pleasures,  pains,  property,  etc., 
should  be  keener  than  his  sense  of  the  similar  passions 
and  possessions  of  other  persons. 

(4)  There  is  yet  another  reason  for  this  fact.  In  this 
threefold  thought  of  personal  elements,  the  actual  alter 
comes  last,  considered  as  a  finished  person,  with  an  inde- 
pendent existence,  and  independent  rights  under  the  social 
bond.  Each  new  accretion  to  the  whole  complex  personal 
sense  has  its  first  application,  in  action,  to  the  real  ego. 
It  is  only  by  this  active  appropriation  of  the  suggestions 
from  the  environment,  that  the  growth  seen  in  the  dialectic 
process  can  go  on  at  all.  So  the  method  of  getting  the 
attitudes  which  come  to  stand  for  the  relations  of  personal 
agents  brings  t/iem  into  more  or  less  habitual  exercise  first 
in  connection  with  the  more  private  life  of  the  ego.  The 
generalization  of  the  sense  of  personality  really  involves 
something  of  a  new  process  of  accommodation,  which 
must  be  made  first  of  all  by  the  thinker  to  whom  they  are 
personal. 

For  example,  our  attitudes  for  self-defence  are  simpler 
and  more  direct  than  those  for  the  defence  of  another 
or  of  several  persons.  Just  as  it  is  easier  to  hold  an 


2Q2  His  Intelligence 

umbrella  over  one  than  over  two, — no  matter  how  large 
the  umbrella  may  be,  —  so  it  is  easier  to  strike  an  attitude 
of  self-defence  than  to  interpose  in  an  effective  way  to 
shield  some  one  else.  Apart  from  any  literal  meaning 
attaching  to  such  examples  drawn  from  our  adult  lives, 
we  may  still  use  them  as  analogies  in  our  present  discus- 
sion. The  self-preservative  actions  are  more  reflex,  as  was 
seen  above  on  the  purely  physical  side.  The  child's  atti- 
tudes are  set  first  by  his  life-adaptations  of  instinct, 
thought,  and  emotion;  and  the  extending  of  these  to  in- 
clude the  welfare  of  others  involves  some  modification 
and  extension  of  them.  The  simple  fact  that  the  thought 
of  self,  when  it  has  become  ejective,  is  more  complex  and 
involved,  makes  it  clear  that  it  must  be  a  little  later  and 
less  spontaneous  in  its  modes  of  expression  and  action. 

There  is,  therefore,  a  period  of  relative  selfishness  in 
the  child  extending  from  the  third  into  the  fifth  or  sixth 
years.1  It  is  an  incident  in  his  growth.  It  is  different 
both  from  the  unreflective  and  spontaneous  aggressive 
period,  before  the  child  becomes  aware  of  himself  as 
a  personal  agent,  and  also  from  the  real  reflective  self- 
ishness which  comes  to  be  one  of  his  moving  principles 
when  he  grows  to  enough  maturity  to  think  out  schemes 
for  his  own  advantage  at  the  expense  of  the  interests  of 
others.  It  is,  rather,  a  period  of  natve  cunning  and  sub- 

1  It  is  not  at  all  difficult  to  imagine  the  place  the  sort  of  semi-reflective 
cunning  and  craft  corresponding  to  this  must  have  played  in  the  conditions 
of  early  social  life.  The  treachery  of  ambush  and  broken  truce,  existing  side 
by  side  with  internal  tribal  organization  and  inter-tribal  unions  for  defence, 
based  on  'duties  and  rights'  —  as  for  example  in  the  experience  of  the  early 
settlers  with  the  North  American  Indians  —  shows  both  sides  of  this  mental 
condition.  It  involves  both  the  factors  required  in  the  process  of  '  social  se- 
lection' of  groups:  sociality  and  competition  (see  Chap.  V.,  §  4). 


Social  Intelligence  293 

terfuge.  It  is  not  real  craft,  nor  deliberate  plotting ;  and 
wherein  the  child  seems  to  be  a  victim  of  '  original  sin,' 
this  is  about  all  his  sin.  He  has  certain  unorganized 
impulses  of  an  organic  kind,  which,  simply  from  their  lack 
of  organization  and  their  tendency  to  be  reflex,  get  the 
credit  of  being  bad ;  and  with  them  he  has,  on  the  mental 
side,  the  quasi-reflective  selfish  tendencies  just  described, 
which,  if  not  actually  immoral,  are  going  on  very  fast  to 
be  so. 

185.  Coming  to  consider  further  the  actual  attainment 
of  reflection  by  the  child,  we  find  the  transition  ten- 
dencies already  remarked  upon  taking  form  in  a  complex 
and  most  elusive  result.  It  is  elusive  because  its  descrip- 
tion cannot  be  a  matter  of  general  statement  in  brief  for- 
mulas ;  it  is  a  series  of  phases  each  of  which  represents 
a  host  of  more  elementary  forces.  The  preceding  investi- 
gation of  these  earlier  tendencies  gives  us,  however,  as  far 
as  it  is  true,  the  main  lines  of  influence  to  which  the  child 
is  still  to  respond  in  the  environment,  and  with  them  also 
the  main  lines  of  tendency  which  his  responses  take  on. 
It  is  by  his  natural  growth,  whereby  he  becomes  reflective 
and  ethical,  that  he  escapes  the  relatively  egotistic  use  of 
his  intelligence  described  in  this  chapter.  His  further 
progress  we  shall  discuss  under  the  head  of  '  Sentiment.' 


CHAPTER   VIII 
His  SENTIMENTS 

WE  have  reached  a  point  of  view,  in  the  preceding 
discussions,  which  gives  us  an  outlook  upon  those  impor- 
tant aspects  of  human  life  which  are  called  sentiments. 
We  need  not  stop  to  justify  any  psychological  definition 
of  sentiment ;  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  what  we  mean 
by  sentiment  and  what  its  place  is  in  our  scheme  of  social 
phenomena. 

§  i .    The  Genesis  of  Sentiment 

1 86.  We  have  seen  the  child's  mind  showing  a  finer 
sort  of  appreciation  of  the  meaning  of  the  actions  of 
his  social  fellows,  as  he  grows  into  the  more  adequate 
realization  of  personality ;  and  we  have  found  him  gradu- 
ally forming  a  thought  of  self  which  is  above  the  exam- 
ples of  personality  which  men  as  individuals  show.  He 
reaches  on  to  an  ideal  self,  which  represents  his  best 
accommodation  to  self  in  general ;  the  regular,  law-abid- 
ing, sanction-bringing,  duty-observing  self  hovers  over 
his  thought,  inspires  it,  and  regulates  its  tendencies  to 
action.  I  say  that  it  represents  his  accommodations, 
since,  as  we  have  been  seeing  all  along,  it  is  by  his 
action  on  the  '  copies '  which  he  gets  that  he  realizes 
and  interprets  their  meaning  in  his  own  growth.  This 
general  notion  of  self  is,  like  all  general  notions  con- 
sidered as  general,  not  a  presentation,  not  a  mental  con- 

294 


The  Genesis  of  Sentiment  295 

tent,  but  an  attitude,  a  way  of  acting;  and  the  child 
has  to  bring  all  the  partial  personal  tendencies  to  action 
which  spring  up  on  the  thought  of  the  partial  more 
isolated  selves  of  his  habit,  into  the  way  of  action  which 
we  call  ethical  conduct.  The  growth  of  the  ethical  sense 
is  a  growth  in  motor  accommodation.  Viewed  on  the 
side  of  what  it  has  already  hardened  into,  on  the  side 
of  habit,  it  shows  the  man's  or  the  child's  actual  morality, 
his  degree  of  actual  conformity  to  the  ethical  ideal ;  and, 
viewed  on  the  side  of  the  ideal  itself,  its  unrealized  part, 
its  tendency  to  perfect  lawfulness  and  complete  submis- 
sion without  revolt,  it  shows  his  obligation.1 

187.  Of  course  both  of  these  phases  tend  to  terminate 
on  actual  persons ;  all  attitudes  have  to  have  objective 
termini.  The  child's  actual  mental  picture  of  what  is 
good  in  a  person  is  made  up  from  his  own  acts  and 
the  acts  which  he  conceives  as  possibly  his  own ;  this 
is  the  concrete  body  of  his  ethical  ideal.  And  then, 
so  far  as  he  feels  it  to  be  inadequate,  he  seeks  to  find, 
in  the  persons  projective  to  him,  some  one  or  more 
whose  actions  are  better  than  his.  This  means  'better'  in 
the  vague  undefined  way  that  all  '  projective '  experience 
must  be.  He  knows  that  the  father,  for  example,  is  good 
in  the  way  that  he  understands  goodness ;  but  he  feels 
that  the  father  is  also  better,  in  the  goodness  which  is  his 
alone,  i.e.,  which  the  child  cannot  yet  understand  nor  illus- 
trate by  his  own  acts  or  thought. 

Now  this  latter  aspect  of  his  attitude  is,  I  think,  what 
we  mean  by  sentiment :  it  is  the  emotional  or  active 
tendency  of  consciousness  away  beyond  the  confines  of 

1  Cf.  the  latter  parts  of  Chaps.  I.  and  VII.  with  which  the  sections  im- 
mediately following  make  close  connection. 


296  His  Sentiments 

its  actual  interpretations.  It  represents  the  further  drift 
of  habit  toward  its  own  completion ;  it  is  the  way  we 
discount,  in  feeling,  our  own  future  progress  in  personal 
attainment  and  growth.  It  is  essentially  'prospective' 
in  its  nature.  Just  as  we  get  the  thought  of  the  ego 
as  a  fact,  as  a  thing  which  is,  by  a  growth  upon  which 
we  are  able  to  look  back  in  retrospect,  and  say,  '  this  is 
my  history ;  here  is  the  road  which  I  have  travelled  up 
to  personality,  and  to  my  social  place ; '  so  we  get  the 
ego  that  is  to  be,  that  'ought  to  be,'  by  a  prophecy  of 
similar  growth  along  the  same  path.  We  hie  us  onward 
by  anticipation.  We  long  to  think  of  other  men  as 
being  further  on,  and  we  give  them  reverence  by  turn- 
ing toward  them  the  sentiments  which  stand  in  us  as 
the  guerdon  of  our  hopes.  Imitation  runs  through  it 
all ;  imitation  is,  indeed,  the  essential  method  of  growth 
in  this  active  stretch  of  our  energies  toward  the  ideal.1 
For  the  interpretations  which  our  past  actions  express 
were  secured  by  the  imitative  absorption  of  the  personal 
suggestive  copies  of  the  social  environment;  and  the 
projective  part  of  the  ideal  set  us  by  others  is,  in  so 
far  as  we  picture  it  at  all,  a  reconstruction,  in  an  imita- 
tive way,  of  the  same  material.  And  when  the  actor 
goes  on  to  attain  the  new  growth  which  brings  him 
further  towards  the  ideal,  it  is  again  by  actually  finding 
in  the  social  circle  better  illustrations  of  righteousness, 
beauty,  etc.,  which  he  takes  to  himself  by  imitation. 
This  I  need  not  enlarge  upon.  But  the  actual  phases 

1  In  my  Handbook  of  Psychology,  II.,  p.  201  f.,  I  have  defined  ideals  as :  "the 
forms  which  we  feel  our  conceptions  would  take  if  we  were  able  to  realize  in 
them  a  satisfying  degree  of  unity,  harmony,  significance,  and  universality."  In 
the  province  of '  ideals '  we  have  the  general  class  of  '  aesthetic  inventions ' 
referred  to  above  (Sect.  iia). 


Ethical  Sentiment  297 

of  the  sentiments  which  thus  arise  about  the  ideal 
growth  of  personality  may  now  claim  some  attention ; 
since  they  will  be  seen  in  the  sequel  to  be  factors  of 
the  greatest  importance  in  the  organization  and  progress 
of  society. 

§  2.    Ethical  Sentiment 

1 88.  The  most  general  and  important  phase  of  ethical 
sentiment  is  that  known  in  theoretical  ethics  as  the 
sense  of  obligation.  Defining  this  sense,  in  general,  as 
we  have  already  found  it  right  to  do,  as  the  sense  of 
the  lack  of  unity  in  the  highest  region  of  motor  func- 
tion, we  may  point  out  a  little  more  fully  its  mode  of 
acting  and  its  bearings  in  the  mental  and  social  life. 

The  growing  habit  which  is  seen  in  the  thought  of 
an  ideal  self  stands  as  the  goal  of  assimilation  for  the 
partial  expressions  of  personality  issuing  in  particular  self- 
ish or  generous  actions.  The  fact,  however,  that  these 
particular  actions  are  not  inhibited  or  modified  in  view 
of  the  ideal,  but  get  performed  in  spite  of  the  need  of 
further  co-ordination  and  assimilation  to  the  ideal  copy, 
is  felt  as  a  state  of  tension  and  lack  of  equilibrium, 
which  accounts  for  the  real  antithesis  of  tendencies  which 
appears  in  every  ethical  situation.  The  sense  of  obli- 
gation brings  to  consciousness  two  antithetical  thoughts 
of  personality :  that  of  the  self  as  it  stands,  more  or 
less  complete  in  habit,  with  its  well-known  tendencies 
to  action ;  and  over  against  this  the  sense  of  the  ideal 
self,  the  being  perhaps  temporarily  embodied  in  father, 
priest,  or  whoever-else,  the  better  self  from  whose  actions 
the  copy  is  to  come  for  the  further  reduction  of  the  self- 
ishly or  generously  capricious  self  to  order  and  good- 


298  His  Sentiments 

ness.  I  feel  that  I  ought  to  be  like  the  better  person; 
and  even  though  I  cannot  see  how  this  better  person 
will  act  in  this  case  or  that,  yet  I  have  enough  of  a 
habit  of  submission  to  him,  or  enough  reverence  for  his 
ideals,  to  feel  my  personal  actions  tending  to  lose  their 
independence  and  their  adequacy  in  my  own  eyes.  In 
the  mind  of  the  child,  this  sense  of  '  oughtness '  arises 
in  a  very  interesting  way,  as  soon  as  he  has  learned  to 
obey  in  measure  sufficient  to  set  the  habit  of  submission 
on  its  feet;  for,  in  so  doing,  the  beginning  of  assimila- 
tion to  the  larger  copy  set  by  the  injunction  of  another 
is  secured ;  and  on  that  basis,  the  further  growth  may 
be  expected  to  proceed  by  the  internal  injunction  which 
this  very  tendency  to  a  larger  assimilation  creates. 

From  the  first,  this  growing  sense  of  obligation  is  a 
social  thing  in  several  ways ;  and  our  development  requires 
their  statement  even  at  the  risk  of  some  repetition  of  the 
intimations  made  in  the  earlier  pages. 

189.  I.  In  the  first  place,  the  leading-string  in  the  child's 
ethical  growth  is,  all  the  time,  the  presence  of  other  per- 
sons from  whom  the  '  word  of  command '  and  the  sugges- 
tion and  example  of  goodness,  directly  come.  The  very 
strenuousness  of  command  at  first  breaks  in  upon  his 
personal  capricious  reactions,  and  so  starts  his  sense  of 
a  larger  order.  Then  the  constant  teachings  of  the 
actions  of  others,  their  conduct  toward  each  other,  to 
which  the  child  comes  as  a  curious  spectator,  their  ways 
of  leading  him  out  into  his  imitations,  and  their  com- 
ments upon  the  interpretations  which  he  makes  when  he 
comes  to  act  more  complexly  for  himself,  all  this  —  in 
this  sphere  as  in  the  wider  sphere  of  personal  attainment 
in  general,  in  which  we  have  already  traced  the  influ- 


Ethical  Sentiment  299 

ences  which  he  experiences  —  stimulates,  confirms,  and 
controls  his  growth.  Further,  he  finds  two  social  ways 
of  showing  his  progress.  He  constantly  exhibits  his 
attainments  in  this  direction,  as  in  others  —  that  first ; 
and  then  he  lays  down  the  crude  law  of  his  own  right- 
eousness to  the  other  children,  and  even  seeks  occasion 
to  find  his  elders  violating  what  they  have  taught  him. 
My  child  says  to  me  at  the  dinner  table :  '  Papa,  what 
do  you  do  with  your  hands  while  you  are  waiting  ? '  or, 
'  Papa,  you  should  take  off  your  hat  in  the  house.'  This 
is  a  natural  and  necessary  movement  in  the  growth  of 
the  ethical  sense.  It  indicates  that  the  child's  sense 
that  my  assimilation  of  the  self  of  habit,  the  self  which 
he  has  ejected  outward  and  lodged  in  me,  must  go  on 
just  as  his  does;  and  that  the  conduct  of  this  myself-of- 
habit  which  does  not  show  proper  reduction  to  the  grow- 
ing ideal  of  a  self  '  ought '  not  to  act  as  it  does.  The  two 
applications  of  this  '  ought  not '  —  that  to  me  and  that  to 
him  —  are  not  really  two;  they  are  one;  for  the  very 
exhibition  of  self  to  which  the  ought-not  applies  is  the 
same  in  me  as  in  him. 

This  latter  it  is  which  gives  its  social  value  to  the 
experience.  It  elevates  the  social  basis  of  the  emotions, 
and  attitudes  generally,  right  up  into  the  ethical  sphere, 
and  shows  the  moral  sense  to  be  essentially  a  social  thing. 
The  child's  exhibitions  of  his  morality,  and  his  require- 
ment that  we  shall  recognize  and  confirm  them  by  our- 
selves conforming  to  them,  is  an  outlet  for  the  intimate 
and  hidden  movement  of  his  growth.  Without  this  social 
appeal  and  its  consequences,  he  could  not  be  sure  of  his 
progress,  or  have  that  sense  of  social  security  in  his 
judgments  which  makes  his  morality  really  a  part  of  the 


300  His  Sentiments 

world  morality.  In  short,  what,  on  this  subjective  side,  is 
a  spontaneous  appeal  of  the  child  to  the  social  environ- 
ment for  confirmation  and  support,  is  on  the  objective  side 
evidence  that  the  child  is  growing  under  direct  social  con- 
trol. His  attainments  in  morality  represent  at  each  stage 
a  social  level  or  stratum.  As  far  as  he  does  not  thus  keep 
his  head  up,  the  waves  of  social  influence  may  go  over  him 
and  swamp  him. 

190.  II.  The  second  general  social  feature  of  the  child's 
subjective  ethical  experience  is  seen  in  the  possibility  of  /ns 
further  progress  at  any  time.  As  he  gets  more  adequate 
views  of  morality,  and  incorporates  them  in  his  own  self- 
sense,  under  stress  of  the  sense  of  obligation,  his  sense  of 
the  ideal  grows  too.  His  obligations,  instead  of  diminish- 
ing, only  increase. 

This  is  again  a  social  phenomenon  ;  and  we  have  seen 
the  ground  of  it  in  the  remarks  made  above  on  the  imita- 
tive character  of  the  ideal  standards  which  consciousness 
sets  up.  In  order  to  grow,  the  ethical  sense,  like  every- 
thing else,  must  be  fed ;  and  its  only  food  is  personal 
food,  social  food.  The  child  can  gain  new  levels  only 
provided  society  show  the  strata  which  these  new  levels 
represent.  He  must  have  relationships  which  give  him 
room  to  do  right,  if  he  would  do  right ;  and  the  very 
sense  that  he  should  do  right  can  get  its  growth  only  in 
the  environment  in  which  it  has  higher  illustrations  already. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  young  child's  ethical  environ- 
ment is  usually  so  far  ahead  of  him  that  he  is  drawn  on 
by  strides.  His  sense  of  an  ideal  self  is  fed  so  constantly 
in  all  his  social  relationships  that  his  learning  is  limited 
only  by  his  own  power  of  assimilating  'copy.'  This  is 
the  normal  case ;  the  actual  way  that  the  child  gets  his 


Ethical  Sentiment  301 

ethical  sense.  The  further  question  as  to  what  kind  of 
an  ethical  sense  he  gets,  and  what  its  variations  are  for 
good  or  bad  in  consequence  of  variations  either  in  physi- 
cal or  social  heredity,  —  that  is  not  now  before  us. 

These  two  social  features  of  personal  growth  have  had 
so  much  emphasis  in  the  earlier  discussions  of  the  child's 
progress,  that  it  is  sufficient  to  have  suggested  them  in 
this  connection  as  applicable  to  the  ethical  sense  as  well. 
There  are  certain  aspects  of  the  case,  however,  which  get 
further  value  from  the  objective  point  of  view, — that 
which  looks  upon  society  from  the  outside  rather  than 
from  the  individual's  own  personal  experience,  —  and  I 
wish  to  set  them  in  evidence  at  this  point,  again  giving 
r6sum6s  of  earlier  positions  for  the  sake  of  the  special 
ethical  applications. 

191.  The  objective  social  bearings  of  the  ethical  sense 
come  under  the  wide  class  of  facts  which  we  have  con- 
sidered under  the  phrase  'social  heredity.'  By  this,  it 
will  be  remembered,  we  designated  the  mass  of  organized 
tradition,  custom,  usage,  social  habit,  etc.,  which  is  already 
embodied  in  the  institutions  and  ways  of  acting,  thinking, 
etc.,  of  a  given  social  group,  considered  as  the  normal 
heritage  of  the  individual  child.  And  it  is  at  once  seen 
that  the  lines  of  theory  which  have  been  already  laid 
down  for  the  interpretation  of  this  group  of  phenomena 
(Chapter  II.)  must  include  and  explain  the  content  of 
ethical  tradition  and  custom ;  for  they  also  involve  rela- 
tionships which  the  individual  must  grow  up  to  inherit  and 
maintain.  From  this  point  of  view  we  get  a  view  of  race 
solidarity  and  progress  analogous  to  that  already  reached 
in  the  lower  spheres  of  emotion  and  instinct.  This  is  evi- 
dent in  the  following  ways  :  — 


302  His  Sentiments 

192.  (i)  The  physical  heredity  of  a  man  represents  a 
compromise,  as  we  have  seen,  between  organization,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  plasticity  on  the  other.  The  organiza- 
tion element  fits  him  for  the  instinctive  actions  and  atti- 
tudes which  have  grown  up  as  useful  in  race-history,  and 
have  not  been  superseded  by  the  activities  of  the  later 
periods.  So  in  the  case  of  emotion,  we  found  that  certain 
emotional  expressions  which  were  to  be  accounted  for 
as  utility  reactions  in  a  simpler  and  different  environment, 
still  survived  in  whole  or  in  part  in  the  realm  of  intelli- 
gence and  social  organization,  and  were  still  associated 
with  the  same  kind  of  mental  experience  as  formerly, 
except  that  they  now  serve  higher  social  and  intelligent 
purposes  as  well.  Whatever  of  the  organic  period  the 
progress  in  the  new  directions  did  not  efface,  this  was 
left.  Where  it  was  useless,  it  became  vestigial,  as  the 
showing  of  the  teeth,  lifting  of  the  hair,  etc.,  in  certain 
emotional  seizures ;  and  where  it  was  useful,  if  only  for 
the  purposes  of  expression  itself,  there  it  remained,  both 
to  bear  witness  to  the  utilities  under  which  it  originated, 
and  also  to  those  for  which  its  new  stimulations  call  it  out. 
Blushing  has  been  shown  to  have  arisen  in  this  way,  and 
to  have  survived,  in  spite  of  the  apparent  inutility  of  it  in 
socially  organized  society ;  and  that  the  ethical  sentiment 
requires  the  same  theory  on  this  point  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  ethical  shame  brings  the  same  blush  that  physi- 
cal shame  does. 

But  that  these  survivals  are  really  a  compromise  be- 
tween the  two  tendencies  represented  by  personal  growth 
on  the  one  hand,  and  social  organization  on  the  other 
hand,  is  evident  from  the  modifications  which  they  have 
undergone.  Most  detailed  instincts  of  the  animal  world 


Ethical  Sentiment  303 

have  entirely  disappeared  in  man.  He  has,  at  the  best,  a 
lot  of  so-called  impulses  which  merely  show  the  direction  of 
his  former  adaptations  without  leading  him  to  carry  them 
out.  They  are  the  merest  fragments  of  instincts,  each 
a  torso ;  none  can  find  its  adequate  expression  in  un- 
inhibited discharge.  All  the  newer  requirements  of  social 
and  dawning  ethical  life  call  upon  the  organism  to 
develop  self-control,  to  make  itself  docile,  to  forget  the 
violent,  straight-away  kinds  of  action  which  formerly 
characterized  it ;  to  become,  in  short,  intelligent,  delibera- 
tive, volitional,  social.  This  means  the  snubbing  of  in- 
stinct, the  putting  of  a  premium  upon  the  sort  of  heredity 
which  produces  creatures  who  could  and  would  learn  new 
adaptations  by  social  means.  This  is  what  is  meant  by 
plasticity ; :  and  the  hands  in  which  the  child  must  be 
plastic,  the  hands  which  mould  him,  if  he  is  to  become 
ethical,  are  the  hands  of  society. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  this  highest  sphere  of  personal 
development  —  the  ethical  sphere  —  there  seems  to  be 
very  little  natural  heredity,  and  a  great  deal  of  plasticity  ; 
in  short,  a  great  deal  of  social  heredity.  Apart  from  the 
characteristic  temperamental  differences  which  denote 
individuality,  the  sentiments  are  common  to  social  equals. 
The  children  are  at  first  forced  into  conformity  to  the 
rules  of  conduct  of  society ;  and  by  this  forced  submission 
the  habits  are  begun  which  they  afterwards  cultivate  by 
their  own  imitative  responses  to  the  further  examples, 
precepts,  regulations,  etc.,  of  the  social  environment. 

193.  (2)  In  the  fact  of  plasticity,  in  this  high  ethical 
sphere,  we  find,  therefore,  the  real  bond  between  the 
social  whole  and  the  individual.  As  the  child  grows  up, 

1  See  above,  Sect.  32. 


304  His  Sentiments 

under  the  influence  of  teacher,  friend,  companion,  his 
spontaneous  reflections  and  judgments  agree,  in  the  main, 
with  those  of  his  social  milieu.  His  ethical  insight,  as  his 
intellectual  inventiveness,  —  only  much  more,  —  is  limited 
by  his  limitations  of  social  growth.  And  since  these  limi- 
tations are  set  by  the  system  of  influences  which  bear 
in  upon  him  in  the  social  group,  and  which  he  cannot 
transcend,  his  own  opinions  and  judgments  are  as  strictly 
a  matter  of  general  acceptance  as  if  he  and  others  had 
been  born  with  a  set  of  ready-made  ethical  intuitions  in 
common.  But  it  is  because  these  so-called  intuitions 
are  progressive  things,  that  society  and  the  individual 
in  society  do  not  stand  still  in  the  ethical  life  any 
more  absolutely  than  in  the  intellectual,  or  in  the 
purely  social  life.  Ethical  phenomena  are  phenomena 
of  organization,  —  that  is,  in  their  origin,  —  and  the  soli- 
darity of  the  results,  the  apparent  universality  of  ethical 
sentiment,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  this  sentiment  is  a  thing 
of  common  and  united  attainment.  It  is  in  society  be- 
cause it  is  in  all  the  individuals ;  but  it  is  in  each  indi- 
vidual because  it  is  already  in  society.  It  is  one  of  those 
'  arguments  in  a  circle '  with  which  nature  so  often  reasons 
out  the  development  problem.  Of  course  we  must  not 
leave  out  the  actual  increments  of  progress  which  the 
individuals  make,  the  ways  in  which  the  best  individuals 
improve  upon  the  lessons  which  they  learn  from  society, 
and  so  go  on,  in  turn,  to  teach  society ;  but  that  is  apart 
from  the  topic  of  our  present  interest,  —  the  topic  which 
we  set  ourselves  when  we  inquire  into  the  individual's 
method  of  attaining  to  ethical  sentiment  and  character. 
The  point  here  is  that  he  learns  his  ethical  lessons  from 
society ;  and  that  means  that  he  learns  them  from  his 


Ethical  Sentiment  305 

ancestors  to  the  same  extent  that  he  would  if  they  were 
knit  into  his  original  endowment ;  and  further,  that  they 
are  of  the  sam«  general  and  universal  character  as  if  they 
had  been  imposed  by  some  authority  upon  both  the  indi- 
vidual and  society,  instead  of  coming  by  the  natural  process 
of  learning  and  growth. 

194.  This  solidarity,  in  the  ethical  realm,  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  his  social  fellows  may  be  shown  by  the  ex- 
amination of  a  claim  recently  made  by  Mr.  Huxley  in  his 
well-known  Romanes  Address,  already  referred  to.  Mr. 
Huxley's  point,  put  in  social  terms,  is  that  if  the  ethical 
sense  were  the  outcome  of  social  relationships,  then  obliga- 
tion would  attach  equally  to  both  the  sorts  of  action  which 
the  ethical  sense  takes  cognizance  of,  i.e.,  we  should  feel 
obligation  to  perform  the  bad  in  which  society  indulges, 
equally  with  the  good.  Put  in  genetic  terms,  this  objec- 
tion would  read  somewhat  like  this :  if  the  sense  of  obli- 
gation arise  from  the  lack  of  assimilation  of  new  elements 
to  old  categories  of  actions,  —  of  new  actions  to  old  habits, 
—  then  all  such  cases  of  lack  of  assimilation  should  give 
the  sense  of  obligation.  How,  then,  do  we  come  to  say 
that  we  are  under  obligation  to  perform  certain  established 
actions,  and  under  equal  obligation  to  avoid  others  which 
are  equally  well  established  ? 

This  objection  holds,  I  think,  as  against  the  theories  of 
Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Spencer  which  Mr.  Huxley  prob- 
ably had  before  his  mind ;  and  it  is  the  same  objection  to 
those  theories  which  we  also  have  had  occasion  to  urge 
above.1  But  it  does  not  hold  against  all  genetic  theories 
of  the  ethical  sentiment.  If  we  account  for  the  rise  of 
the  sense  of  obligation  in  terms  of  lack  of  assimilation, 

1  Above,  Chap.  I.,  §  2  (Sect.  20). 
X 


306  His  Sentiments 

pure  and  simple,  then  of  course  all  such  lack  of  assimila- 
tion should  produce  it.  But  that  is  not  the  true  account. 
For  example,  if  a  new  action  did  not  assinailate  to  my  ego 
sense,  then  it  would  be  obligatory  upon  me  to  make  it 
assimilate,  or  to  avoid  doing  it ;  and  if  another  action  did 
not  assimilate  with  my  altruistic  self-sense,  then  the  same 
of  that.  This  would  at  once  introduce  contradiction  and 
confusion  into  the  life  of  the  child ;  and  this  state  of 
things  is  actually  realized  in  the  life  of  tJic  child  before  real 
ethical  obligation  dawns  upon  hint ;  it  is  the  simple  fact  of 
suggestibility.  The  child  does  feel  impelled  to  do  every 
action  on  both  sides.  A  selfish  action  arouses  his  selfish- 
ness, and  a  generous  action  his  generosity.  It  is  only 
the  concrete  cropping  out  of  the  general  law  which  has 
become  embodied  in  the  tendency  to  imitate. 

And  further,  we  may  concede  to  Mr.  Huxley  that 
this  state  of  things  is  a  necessary  stepping-stone  to  real 
morality. 

Yet  the  fact  is  that  we  do  not  call  moral  this  general 
call  to  act  by  imitation,  to  assimilate  every  kind  of  action 
indiscriminately ;  and  for  the  simple  reason,  that  if  all 
acts  are  moral,  then  none  are  —  we  have  no  need  for  the 
category  'moral '  at  all.  I  think,  indeed,  the  state  of  things 
which  Mr.  Huxley  depicts  is  universal  in  the  animal 
world ;  especially  striking  is  it  in  the  gregarious  animals, 
where  the  antithesis  between  unreflective  egoism  and 
sociality  is  well  marked.  These  animals  have,  no  doubt, 
a  very  strong  sense  of  the  impelling  character  of  actions 
of  both  kinds.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  ethical 
theories  which  base  the  sense  of  obligation  only  on  these 
instincts  signally  fail,  as  Mr.  Huxley  says,  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  our  human  ethical  sense  does  distinguish 


Ethical  Sentiment  307 

between  acts  which  ought  to  be  done  and  acts,  equally 
impelling  by  physical  or  social  impulsion,  which  ought  not 
to  be  done.  We  have  one  sense  of  obligation  which  covers 
both  the  positive  and  the  negative  instances.  Mr.  Huxley 
seems  to  think  that  no  further  statement  of  natural  his- 
tory factors  can  account  for  this ; J  and  he  gives  up  the 
solution  from  an  evolution  point  of  view,  except  to  leave 
open  the  door  for  '  spontaneous  variations,'  which  may 
bring  morality  in. 

In  this  opinions  may  differ,  as  may  be  inferred  from 
the  foregoing.  The  child's  imitative  growth  into  a  sense 
of  ideal  personality  sets  a  higher  category  of  action  than 
either  of  the  two  concrete  categories  recognized  by  Darwin, 
Spencer,2  and  the  naturalists  generally,  i.e.,  those  of  spon- 
taneous egoism  and  equally  spontaneous  generosity  or  sym- 
pathy. It  is  in  the  higher  realm  of  assimilation,  where  it 
is  a  question  of  the  assimilation  of  a  new  action  alterna- 
tively to  a  higher  or  to  a  lower*  category  of  habit,  that  the 
sense  of  ethical  obligation  really  takes  its  rise.  The  child 
feels  the  impulsion  of  all  examples,  both  the  selfish  and 
the  social,  and  if  this  impulsion  were  the  '  ought,'  then  in- 
deed he  would  have  two  '  oughts,'  as  on  occasion  he  has 
two  '  musts ' ;  but  he  now  feels  —  after  the  ideal  thought 
of  personality  has  a  good  beginning  in  him  —  that  some 

1  And  it  is  in  this  that  he  seems  to  give  support  to  the  intuitionists,  as  also 
do  Mivart  and  Wallace  on  somewhat  similar  grounds. 

2  I  know  that  Mr.  Spencer  reaches  a  social  derivation  of  obligation,  but  it 
remains  a  feeling  due  to  customs  of  obedience,  etc.,  in  social  life;   it  lacks  the 
publicity  arising  from  the  imitative  assimilation  of  actions  to  a  higher  self- 
thought,  as  brought  out  in  the  next  paragraph.     See  the  criticism  of  Hegel  in 
Sect.  331  below. 

8  I  use  these  words  '  higher '  and  '  lower'  in  a  genetic  sense,  with  reference 
to  amount  of  organization  in  the  normal  progress  of  consciousness,  keeping 
'  shy '  of  their  question-begging  meanings. 


308  His  Sentiments 

of  these  actions  on  both  sides  will  assimilate  to  this  ideal, 
are  called  for  by  this,  will  strengthen  and  reinforce  this, 
while  others  will  not ;  then  comes  the  sense  that  these 
are  good  and  the  rest  in  comparison  with  them  are  bad. 
He  says :  '  I  ought  to  do  this,  since  the  good  man,  my 
ideal  personality,  does  this ;  I  ought  not  to  do  that, 
because  he  does  it  not.'  And  further,  the  reason  that 
he  does  it  not,  is  just  because  the  action  which  he  does 
not  do  represents  one  of  the  lower  concrete  habits,  one 
whose  indulgence  would  tend  to  set  more  firmly  the 
antithesis  between  the  partial  selves  on  the  one  hand, 
and  between  them  and  the  higher  ideal  self  on  the  other 
hand.  To  act  selfishly  —  or  to  act  capriciously,  even 
though  the  action  be  a  generous  one — is  to  undo  my 
growth  toward  a  law-abiding,  reasonable,  and,  in  its  high- 
est sense,  social  person. 

195.  And  as  with  the  individual,  so  with  the  race. 
Society  puts  a  premium  on  assimilation  of  conduct  to 
certain  types  of  action  which  become  formulated  in  law, 
convention,  institutions,  constitutions.  Society  has  its 
right  and  its  wrong,  as  the  individual  has.  In  society, 
as  in  the  private  sphere,  the  generous  act,  as  well  as  the 
selfish  act,  may  be  wrong  —  may  violate  law.  The  social 
ideal  represents  the  reduction  of  partial  ideals,  found  in 
this  man  or  that,  to  a  common  basis.  Each  man  might 
say :  '  I  will  do  this,  and  I  will  do  that ;  we  will  all 
return  to  nature  and  do  what  we  please  ;  '  this  is  the 
state  of  things  in  society  that  the  theories  mentioned  would 
require  —  corresponding  to  the  equality  to  the  individual 
of  all  actions  in  virtue  of  their  equal  impelling  force. 
But  the  alternative  here,  as  in  the  case  of  the  individual, 
is  not  between  this  force  and  that  law  imposed  ab  extra. 


Ethical  Sentiment  309 

Not  at  all.  Society  simply  goes  on  developing,  and  gets 
the  higher  form  of  impulsion,  authority,  organization ; 
saying  then  to  every  man  :  '  This  is  the  type  of  action  to 
which  you  are  expected  to  conform  voluntarily.1  The  his- 
tory of  mankind  shows  the  same  gradual  refinement  of 
the  social  ideal,  as  the  history  of  the  individual  shows 
in  respect  to  the  personal  ideal.  This  comes  up  again ; 1 
but  I  may  add  that  I  think  Mr.  Huxley  would  again  be 
right  in  saying  that  on  the  basis  of  the  factors  and  pro- 
cesses recognized  by  Mr.  Spencer,  no  genetic  account  of 
social  life  would  be  forthcoming.  For  the  individualist 
and  the  anarchist  would  be  each  his  own  justification,  in 
the  same  sense  as  would  the  collectivist  and  the  philan- 
thropist :  the  justification  which  comes  from  actual  exist- 
ence with  the  law  of  growth  through  habit.  Any  higher 
arbiter,  which  men  would  voluntarily  recognize,  would  be 
wanting ;  and  all  social  ideals  would  stand  on  the  same 
footing. 

J96-  (3)  The  relative  balance  between  the  two  factors, 
hereditary  fixity  and  plasticity,  gives  room  for  the  varia- 
tions which  the  actual  differences  of  men  show  in  respect 
to  their  moral  character  and  temperament.  Greater  natu- 
ral fixity  is  at  the  expense  of  plasticity  ;  and  this  greater 
fixity  may  be  either  in  the  direction  of  less  intelligence 
and  personal  power  of  adaptation  to  social  conditions,  or 
of  the  reverse.  The  first  case  gives  the  atavistic  ten- 
dency :  the  lack  of  moral  character,  due  to  innate  unbal- 
ance in  the  direction  of  nervous  discharge  of  a  lower 
and  less  inhibited  kind.  This  represents  the  more  inde- 
pendent action  of  single  reflexes  and  tendencies ;  but  it 
shows  greater  stability  in  the  particular  function  which 
1  See  below,  Chap.  XIII. 


310  His  Sentiments 

is  brought  into  excessive  action.  The  material  at  the 
disposal  of  such  a  person  for  learning  and  for  new  organi- 
zation during  his  personal  education  is  less  because  of 
the  lower  functions  whose  independent  organization  holds 
the  nervous  substance  locked  up. 

The  other  variation  in  natural  heredity  is  in  the  way  of 
better  social  and  moral  temperament.  It  may  be  simply 
greater  plasticity,  with  greater  inventiveness  on  the  intel- 
lectual side,  or  greater  docility  and  imitativeness  in  the 
emotional  life.  This  last  may  go  to  extremes  in  the  direc- 
tion of  slavish  suggestibility,  especially  in  an  environ- 
ment —  in  the  home,  school,  etc.  —  where  the  lessons  of 
imitation  are  not  supplemented  by  those  of  self-control, 
independence  of  mind,  and  sturdy  assertion  of  personal 
conviction. 

It  is  not  my  aim,  however,  at  this  point  to  determine  the 
details  of  these  and  other  possible  cases ;  but  only  to  show 
that  there  is  room  for  the  ethical  differences  actually  found 
among  men,  in  the  possible  variations  of  these  two  factors, 
natural  and  social  heredity,  to  each  other.  And  it  may  be 
well  to  point  out  that  while  the  tendency  to  atavism,  or 
lower  organization,  puts  a  premium  on  an  unethical  type 
of  character  alone,1  the  other  possibility,  that  of  greater 
plasticity,  docility,  suggestiveness,  is  not  solely  or  to  the 
same  degree  operative  on  the  side  of  the  ethical  type. 
For  the  variations  in  the  direction  of  plasticity  tend  simply 
to  make  the  person  open  to  personal  influences  of  all  kinds, 
not  to  those  alone  which  inculcate  morality,  but  to  those 
also  which  set  examples  of  wickedness.  In  this  latter  case, 
the  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  the  child  is  susceptible  to 

1  Such  as  the  '  criminal-born,'  who  is  only  legally,  not  morally,  a  criminal 
at  all,  in  proportion  as  he  is  literally  criminal-boru. 


Social  Sentiment  as  Such :  Publicity       311 

the  influences  of  his  environment ;  but  then  his  environ- 
ment may  be  good  or  it  may  be  bad.  There  seems  to 
be,  therefore,  in  this  a  brake  on  the  growth  of  the  ethical 
in  human  life  considered  from  the  social  point  of  view.1 
There  is  a  tendency  of  individuals  to  run  down  hill  under 
the  influence  of  suggestion,  and  this  is  notably  the  case, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  the  case  of  suggestion  reinforced 
from  the  crowd. 

197.  With  this  general  view  of  the  sentiment  of  ethical 
obligation,  we  find  it  unnecessary  to  inquire  in  detail  into 
the  more  refined  phases  which  it  presents  in  the  varied 
ethical  situations  of  life.  The  psychologist  has  to  describe 
such  emotions  as  remorse,  jealousy,  repentance,  moral 
pride,  etc. ;  but  we  may  pass  over  them  with  the  meed  of 
emphasis  of  the  social  element  which  they  have  in  com- 
mon with  the  generic  feeling  of  obligation.  They  repre- 
sent special  phases  of  that  sense,  as  different  combinations 
of  social  circumstance  and  relationship  call  it  out.  Re- 
morse is  retrospective  obligation ;  repentance  has  a  pro- 
spective strain ;  although  each  of  these,  and  each  of  the 
other  ethical  emotions,  is  subject  to  the  most  delicate 
variations  and  combinations. 

§  3.    Social  Sentiment  as  Such:   Publicity 

We  have  found  in  actual  life  certain  phases  of  emotion 
which  were  called  'social  emotions  as  such.'2  There  are 
certain  refined  sentiments  of  a  similar  character  in  the 

1  This  allies  itself  to  the  egoistic    balance  found  in  the  individual  (see 
Sect.  184),  and  accounts  for  most  criminality  of  the  kinds  known  as 'occa- 
sional,' and  which  in  many  individuals  goes  on  to  become  '  habitual.' 

2  Chap.  VI.,  §  4- 


312  His  Sentiments 

ethical  life.  On  the  social  side  they  are  seen  in  public 
opinion.  This  rather  indefinite  aspect  of  social  organiza- 
tion has  its  justification  in  the  movements  of  personal 
growth  which  have  already  been  spoken  of.  It  may  be 
well  to  speak  further  of  a  group  of  phenomena  whose 
influence  is  so  real,  confining  our  remarks,  however,  to 
the  ethical  form  of  it,  called  public  sentiment.1  First, 
we  may  point  out  one  or  two  of  the  main  bearings  of 
public  sentiment  upon  the  individual. 

198.  It  is  notorious  that  the  ethical  sentiment  itself  is, 
in  some  degree,  modified  by  public  opinion.  '  Dare  to  be 
a  Daniel,  Dare  to  stand  alone,'  is  by  no  means  a  useless 
exhortation  to  any  of  us.  The  sense  of  social  isolation 
is  usually  a  direct  cause  of  the  weakening  of  moral  deter- 
mination. This  extends  itself  in  other  directions.  The 
moral  judgments  which  we  pass  on  men  and  actions 
are  more  or  less  open  to  influence  from  the  knowledge 
which  we  have  of  their  standing  in  the  community,  and 
of  the  treatment  which  they  receive  from  others.  Even 
the  more  subtle  and  intimate  judgments  which  we  pass 
upon  ourselves  are  liable  to  the  same  influence :  we  judge 
ourselves  in  some  degree  by  the  meed  of  reproach  or 
commendation  which  we  receive  from  the  people  who 
know  us.  Our  first  feeling  of  self-condemnation,  for 
example,  is  often  tempered  and  rendered  less  acute  when 
we  find  that  it  is  not  entirely  supported,  in  the  judgment 
of  society,  at  the  high  notch  where  we  have  placed  it.  A 
potent  influence  on  the  side  of  repentance  and  reform  is 
the  knowledge  that  our  fellow-men  await  it  on  our  part ; 
and  this,  not  with  reference  alone  to  their  opinion  as  such, 

1  See,  besides,  the  remarks  on  public  opinion  in  Chap.  V.,  §  3;  also  Chap. 

X,  §  2. 


Social  Sentiment  as  Such:  Publicity       313 

but  because  our  own  subjective  demand  upon  ourselves 
grows  and  maintains  itself  through  this  factor.  The  actual 
growth  of  ethical  sentiment,  in  the  consciousness  of  a 
man,  especially  the  sense  of  self-condemnation,  with  the 
growth  of  his  knowledge  of  the  judgment  of  his  associ- 
ates, is  a  familiar  personal  experience  to  us  all.  There 
arises  a  peculiar  sense  of  personal  uneasiness,  with  the 
vaguest  and  most  detached  images  of  this  man  or  that 
whose  opinion  reproves  us.  The  uneasiness  increases 
rapidly,  simply  from  the  persistence  of  these  pictures 
of  personal  attitude  on  the  part  of  others.  The  state 
finally  grows  excessively  painful,  and  we  seek  some 
mitigating  circumstance,  either  by  arguing  the  case  in 
self-defence  with  the  pictured  reprover,  or  by  making 
appeal  with  confession  to  some  other  friend  or  acquaint- 
ance. This  latter  resort,  especially  if  the  ministrations 
come  voluntarily  from  another,  is  the  best  balm  to  our 
lacerated  self,  even  though,  again,  the  new  opinion  have 
no  new  facts  of  any  kind  to  urge.  The  simple  sense  of 
social  approval — apart  from  the  ground  of  it — leads  us  to 
tend  toward  the  same  point  of  view;  just  as  the  simple  fact 
of  social  disapproval  —  also  without  statement  of  ground 
—  carries  with  it  the  beginning  of  self-condemnation. 
Furthermore,  there  is  often  a  lack  of  sharp  condemnation 
of  ourselves  as  long  as  our  sins  remain  private ;  we  are 
aware  of  the  sinfulness  in  a  general  way ;  conscience  gets 
in  a  timid  voice,  especially  just  at  the  time  of  commission 
of  the  deed,  and  more  timidly  each  time  that  it  is  com- 
mitted ;  but  there  may  be  no  lively  emotional  reaction, 
no  great  agitation  of  remorse,  no  desperate  attempts  to 
justify  oneself  by  argument,  no  'call  to  repentance.' 
Indeed,  there  is  in  su9h  cases  often  a  subtle  sense  pf 


314  His  Sentiments 

secrecy,  of  the  social  approval  of  one's  general  character 
as  a  whole,  which  comes  in  to  assure  the  sinner  that  his 
sin  is  not  likely  to  come  out ;  and  that  he  need  not  trouble 
himself  about  it.  But  let  it  once  come  out ;  then  his  nature 
asserts  itself.  The  sense  of  publicity  immediately  reacts 
upon  his  own  private  standards  of  judgment.  He  awakes 
to  the  grounds  of  public  condemnation  and  enforces  them 
on  himself.  It  is  now  not  that  he  gets  new  information 
from  the  public ;  not  at  all.  He  finds  himself,  however, 
going  over  the  grounds  on  which  his  friends  are  pos- 
sibly basing  their  judgment  of  him.  He  feels  that  while 
alone,  he,  as  an  interested  party,  did  not  care  to  see 
these  damning  reasons,  yet  society  will  now  care  to  see 
them ;  and  so  he  goes  over  them,  picturing  them  as 
thoughts  of  others.  This  makes  the  thoughts  his  own, 
and  the  emotional  results  his  own  also.  The  wave  of  self- 
condemnation  sweeps  over  him  —  genuine,  profound,  ethi- 
cal ;  not  simply  reflected.  The  social  factor  has  become 
a  real  stimulus  to  his  ethical  nature.  His  own  best  judg- 
ment is  now  for  the  first  time  elicited.  He  says  with  the 
most  profound  earnestness  :  *  Wretched  man  that  I  am  ' ; 
and  with  it :  '  What  a  fool  I  was  to  wait  till  now  to 
see  it.' 

These  and  many  other  aspects  of  the  intimate  depend- 
ence of  the  ethical  sense  upon  its  social  support  —  and 
many  such  interesting  relationships  might  be  pointed  out 
—  may  be  put  under  two  very  general  heads.  First,  we 
may  say  that  ethical  approval,  both  of  oneself  and  of 
others,  is  never  at  its  best  except  when  it  is  accompanied, 
in  the  consciousness  which  has  it,  with  the  knowledge  or 
belief  that  it  is  also  socially  shared.  And  second,  the  best 
ethical  judgment  of  disapproval  is  liable  to  the  same  state- 


Social  Sentiment  as  Such  :  Publicity       3 1 5 

ment.  The  word  '  best '  here  refers  to  the  intensity,  sure- 
ness,  directness,  unqualifiedness  with  which  the  ethical 
attitude,  in  the  particular  case,  is  taken.  We  may  see 
what  this  is,  and  also  why  these  two  general  points  are 
true,  from  the  application  to  the  case  of  the  psychological 
principles  already  put  in  evidence  above.  A  word  or  two 
on  this  application  may  be  in  place. 

199.  When  we  come  to  set  out  fully  the  psychological 
factors  involved  in  the  growth  of  the  ideal  self  which  is 
involved  in  all  the  ethical  emotions,  we  find  an  aspect  of 
it  which  so  far  in  our  study  has  had  no  emphasis.  The 
subtler  facts  of  social  value  in  practical  life,  as  now  men- 
tioned, however,  serve  to  bring  it  out.  It  is  this  :  the  sense 
of  a  self  that  is  good,  regular,  laiv-abiding,  ethical,  the 
standard  of  all  my  judgments  of  right  and  wrong,  must 
be,  in  my  consciousness  of  it,  a  public  self, 

This  means  that  when  I  think  of  this  ideal,  when  I  bring 
a  given  action  to  the  test  of  assimilation  to  it,  —  for  I  cannot 
think  of  it  in  any  circumstances  which  do  not  call  for  its 
application  to  a  concrete  case  of  action,  —  a  part  of  the 
content  of  my  thought  is  necessarily  the  thought  that  the 
judgment  is  one  of  social  generality,  that  others  are  also 
making  the  same  assimilation  of  this  act  to  the  same  ideal. 
In  case,  then,  I  know  that  the  action  is  quite  private,  quite 
secret,  absolutely  unknown  to  anybody  else,  then  the  full 
reinstatement  of  the  conditions  of  an  ethical  judgment  are, 
ipso  facto,  not  present.  My  ideal  category  of  action  is  not 
brought  out ;  for  to  bring  it  out  requires  the  very  sense  of 
publicity  which  my  knowledge  of  privacy  contradicts.  If 
this  be  true  to  psychology,  then  it  is  no  wonder  that 
privacy  destroys  much  of  our  ethical  competence.  This 
conclusion  not  only  accounts  for  the  facts  which  we  have 


316  His  Sentiments 

cited,  but  goes  further,  in  that  by  it  we  discover  a  phase 
of  social  emotion  which  introduces  into  our  lives  a  remark- 
able element  of  solidarity,  and  gives  full  significance  to 
the  expression  'social  sentiment  as  such.'  Let  us  see  then 
what  the  psychological  factors  are  which  justify  the  con- 
clusion. 

200.  The  sense  of  the  publicity  of  the  ethical  self  as 
defined  immediately  above  follows  from  the  fact,  which 
we  have  found  it  necessary  to  recognize,  of  the  unity  of 
the  self-content  in  all  its  development.  We  found  that 
the  ego  and  the  alter  were  in  great  part  identical,  espe- 
cially in  the  part  which  constitutes  them  selves  as  opposed 
to  mere  bodies.  We  found  that  when  I  think  of  myself, 
I  think  ipso  facto  of  you;  and  that  the  emotion  which 
the  thought  arouses,  and  in  view  of  which  I  take  the 
active  attitudes  that  I  do,  rests  upon  that  thought,  no 
matter  which  the  real  ego  in  the  case  may  be,  as  deter- 
mined by  the  actual  conditions,  i.e.,  be  it  me  or  be  it  you. 

If  we  go  back  to  the  child  of  two  or  three  years,  we 
find  that  a  difference  of  emotion  and  attitude  does  arise  in 
view  of  the  real  objective  differences,  and  he  finds  him- 
self acting  in  the  two  ways  called  selfish  and  generous 
respectively,  according  as  the  thought  of  self  is  objec- 
tively determined  in  one  way  or  the  other.  But  these 
two  sorts  of  action  or  attitude  —  guaranteed  as  a  matter 
of  fact  by  the  inborn  expressions  of  the  organism  —  each 
remain  in  so  far  unreflective ;  each  takes  its  cue  from  the 
personal  environment  and  assimilates  its  own  appropriate 
material  from  the  events  of  life.  So  far,  the  child  is  in- 
dependent of  the  opinion  which  other  people  may  form  of 
him  * ;  he  has  no  sense  of  '  publicity,'  no  requirement  that 

1  Except  as  there  is  a  demand  for  social  confirmation  after  the  deed. 


Social  Sentiment  as  Such:  Publicity       317 

his  act  of  spontaneous  sociality  should  be  known  to  be 
what  it  is.  Others  are  important  to  him,  as  giving  him 
personal  copy,  by  example,  precept,  etc.,  and  for  the  rati- 
fication and  confirming  of  his  deeds ;  and  their  influence  is 
seen  in  his  growth  in  these  two  ways. 

But  the  very  necessity  of  making  further  use  of  society 
it  is  which  leads  the  child  on  to  the  additional  step  seen  in 
the  growth  of  a  general  or  ideal  sense  of  self.  This  means, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  formation  of  a  category  of  action 
which  assimilates  the  essential  content  of  self  as  repre- 
sented by  both  the  earlier  partial  thoughts.  He  thinks  of 
self  again  as  independent  of  the  private  objective  marks 
of  individuality,  bodies,  locality,  etc.  To  this  thought  all 
personal  actions  should  conform ;  and  the  concrete  rela- 
tionships between  the  two  selves  called  ego  and  alter 
tend  to  disappear  as  this  form  of  union  is  secured. 
This  is  what  we  call  reflection.  The  higher  thought  of 
self  is  brought  to  judge  the  lower  thoughts.  But  it  is  itself 
a  function  of  the  lower.  It  could  not  rise  except  for  the 
unity  of  content  which  holds  the  two  together.  So  the 
result  of  the  assimilation,  the  actual  attitude  taken  in  any 
particular  concrete  case  toward  one  or  other  in  the  lower 
self -thoughts,  —  the  attitude  which  constitutes  the  sense  of 
ethical  well-  or  ill-desert,  —  this  is  identically  the  same  atti- 
tude for  all  the  concrete  selves.  I  condemn  the  act  of  you 
as  well  as  that  of  me,  or  approve  it,  no  matter  whether  it 
be  objectively  determined  in  a  particular  case  as  really 
mine  or  really  yours.  And  the  reciprocal  nature  of  the 
relation  carries  the  sense  over  into  a  general  application 
simultaneously  to  all  the  possible  other  people  whose  ego 
the  identical  thought  may  stand  for.  This,  then,  brings  in 
the  ejective  thought  of  you  as  reaching  the  same  sense 


318  His  Sentiments 

of  approval  or  disapproval  that  I  do.  Or :  the  thought  that 
ike  judgment  passed  is  actually  in  the  mind  of  some  other  is 
necessary  to  a  full  ethical  judgment  as  such. 

This  may  be  put  in  a  different  way.  My  thought  of  the 
ideal  self  is  general ;  it  must  apply  in  all  the  particular 
cases.  Whatever  mental  movement  it  gives  rise  to,  must 
be  present  in  all  the  particular  cases.  I  find  it  giving  rise 
to  a  feeling  of  condemnation,  in  my  case,  when  a  certain 
action  is  before  me.  It  must  give  rise  to  the  same  condem- 
nation in  the  mind  of  each  of  them.  But,  it  is  said,  this 
is  very  different  from  saying  that  I  must  think  that  it  is 
actually  present  to  them.  Certainly  ;  but  we  must  remem- 
ber that  I  cannot  think  of  myself  with  anything  reflectively 
before  me  without  in  the  act  thinking  ejectively  on  the  same 
content;  hence,  to  think  of  myself  with  this  case  before  me 
is  to  think  of  other  men  also  with  this  case  before  them. 
To  fall  short  of  this  is  to  think,  not  in  terms  of  the  general 
thought  of  self,  not  with  reference  to  the  ideal ;  but  in 
reference  to  some  particular  partial  self  to  whose  know- 
ledge the  case  before  me  is  restricted.  So  it  is  not  enough 
that  I  feel  what  others  would  say  if  they  knew ;  /  must 
feel  that  others  are  judging  because  I  judge.1 

201.  If  this  is  so,  then  in  the  case  in  which  I  am  con- 
scious that  no  one  but  myself  knows  the  act  which  I  am 
committing,  this  consciousness  really  contradicts  an  element 
in  the  mental  psychosis  which  arouses  the  ethical  sentiment ; 
and  as  long  as  I  fully  assure  myself  of  this,  I  cannot  get 
a  completely  moral  judgment.  Of  course  it  is  impossible 
to  maintain  this  state  of  mind  in  its  purity  ;  the  drift  toward 
the  general  statement  of  the  case  in  social  terms  tends  to 

1  See  the  formulation  in  Appendix  D  quoted  from  Professor  Tawney. 


Social  Sentiment  as  Such:  Publicity       319 

establish  the  proper  ethical  sense,  and  imagination  supplies 
the  needed  elements  by  whispering  what  my  friends  would 
say  if  they  knew  my  conduct.  But  this  does  not  take  the 
place  of  actual  knowledge ;  although  it  often  brings  on 
most  tragic  illusions  and  hallucinations  of  persecution,  dis- 
covery, pursuit  by  devils,  bodily  occupation  by  priests,  etc. 
These  latter  cases  indeed  would  serve,  I  think,  if  ade- 
quately investigated  by  ethical  writers  who  give  themselves 
to  casuistry,  to  show  two  very  instructive  points  in  the 
social  nature  of  the  ethical  sense :  first,  the  point  that  hal- 
lucinations of  social  opinion  may  come  to  take  the  place 
of  personal  social  thought  and  of  real  social  tests;  and 
second,  that  actual  social  opinion  may  create  illusions  of 
conscience  where  the  personal  ego  thought  is  weak  or 
deranged.  In  other  words,  there  are  necessarily  the  two 
ingredients,  the  subjective  and  the  ejective  ingredients,  in 
the  general  thought  of  personality;  either  may  be  de- 
ranged, to  the  extent  which  we  describe  as  hallucination, 
in  different  types  of  real  moral  insanity.  This  might  be 
made  the  topic  of  detailed  remarks  based  upon  the  cases 
to  be  found  in  current  pathological  literature.1 

202.  The  essential  publicity  of  the  ethical  sense  teaches 
us  that  in  the  growth  of  this  sense  the  meaning  of  the 
claim  that  man  is  a  social  being  gets  itself  very  much  en- 
larged. In  this  kind  of  sentiment  the  '  ejective '  phase  of 
the  self-thought  is  incorporated,  as  an  intrinsic  element. 
Here  we  have  a  right  to  say  that  the  private  ideal  or  end 
of  the  individual  is  one  with  the  social  ideal  and  end  as  such; 
just  for  the  reason  that  the  social  end  can  get  no  state- 

1  An  interesting  use  of  the  relation  between  the  self  and  the  social  sense 
is  made  by  Royce  apropos  of  certain  'Anomalies  of  Self-consciousness,' 
Psych.  Rev.,  II.,  p.  433,  Sept.,  1895 


320  His  Sentiments 

ment  apart  from  this  'public'  personal  construction  which 
the  individual  is  now  making.  This  again  we  must  reserve 
for  further  statement,  when  we  come  to  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  social  progress.1 

§  4.    Practical  Reason 

203.  One  thing,  however,  we  may  add.  This  incor- 
poration of  the  ejective  person,  the  alter,  into  the  very 
body  of  the  thought  from  which  the  ethical,  social,  and 
other  sentiments  arise,  leads,  necessarily,  to  a  new  function 
of  the  intelligence,  in  its  relation  to  the  social  forces  as  a 
whole.  It  appeared  in  an  earlier  connection  that  the 
child  uses  his  intelligence  to  bend  and  manipulate  the 
actions  of  persons  around  him ;  he  anticipates  the  obser- 
vations, opinions,  attitudes,  of  others,  and  acts  to  mislead 
them,  or,  at  least,  to  utilize  them  for  certain  private  ends. 
This  also  characterizes  an  early  epoch  in  the  development 
of  man.  This  is  the  natural  use  of  intelligence,  so  long  as 
there  is  relative  independence  in  the  two  thoughts  of  self, 
the  ego  thought  and  the  alter  thought.  They  are,  in  a 
measure,  rival  occupants  of  consciousness ;  and  when  such 
a  new  instrument  of  utility  comes  to  hand  in  the  intelli- 
gence, developed,  as  we  must  think,  with  greater  view  to 
the  personal  adaptations  of  the  individual,  —  and  so  tempt- 
ing him  into  original  sin,  —  it  is  natural  that  one  of  these 
rival  thoughts  should  get  the  balance  of  benefit  from  it. 

But  now,  in  the  growth  of  sentiment, — social,  ethical, 
religious,  —  this  is  no  longer  so.  The  very  growth  of  reflec- 
tive intelligence  is  growth  in  generality  of  content.  The 
content  of  the  sense  of  self  upon  which  the  sentiments  de- 

i  See  Chap.  XIIL 


Practical  Reason  321 

pend  in  order  to  become  general,  must  have  reference  to  all 
examples  of  personality,  to  the  alter  as  well  as  to  the  ego 
thought.  There  comes  into  consciousness,  therefore,  as 
this  proceeds,  a  direct  call  to  the  inhibitions  of  all  the 
private  ways  of  using  intelligence  characteristic  of  the 
earlier  period.  The  demand  for  conformity  to  an  ideal 
is  made  upon  all  these  partial  tendencies ;  for,  as  has  been 
said,  the  newer  growth  of  the  content  of  self,  representing 
ipso  facto  the  newer  function  of  intelligence,  supersedes 
the  old ;  so  both  acts  of  intentionally  designed  selfish 
appropriation  and  acts  of  intentionally  designed  generos- 
ity now  yield  spontaneously  to  this  demand  for  conformity 
to  the  higher  personal  thought,  which  is  of  public  value. 

We  reach  here,  therefore,  a  great  turn  in  the  course  of 
personal  development  —  a  turn  which  is  rich  in  implica- 
tions for  the  interpretation  of  the  social  movement.  This 
crisis  is  to  be,  in  our  further  study  of  social  development, 
perhaps  the  most  important  factor.  It  has  its  match  in 
interest  and  importance,  perhaps,  only  in  the  dawn  of 
intelligence  itself  in  the  earlier  period,  whereby  the  in- 
stinctive and  organic  co-operation  of  the  animals  yielded 
to  the  conscious  and  intelligent  co-operation  of  men. 

204.  The  fact  which  stands  out  most  plainly  is  that 
already  described,  in  the  chapter  on  the  development  of 
the  sense  of  self,  as  the  growth  of  the  ethical  self.  The 
sense  of  relationships  of  right  and  wrong  is,  of  course, 
most  momentous,  both  in  the  history  of  the  individual  and 
in  that  of  the  race.  We  found  that  the  theories  which 
attempted  to  state  the  ethical  self  —  the  thought  of  a  self 
who  does  right  or  wrong  —  in  terms  of  either  of  the  two 
selves  characterized  as  the  '  habitual '  and  the  '  social,'  are 
equally  inadequate.  This  result  now  has  support  on  the 


322  His  Sentiments 

plane  of  the  intelligence ;  and  our  results  are  available  to 
refute  the  school  of  thinkers  who  say  that  the  ethical  end 
is  some  form  of  intelligent  self-interest  —  the  Utilitarians. 
An  appeal  to  the  ethical  consciousness  is  sufficient  to  show 
that  the  content  thought  of,  when  the  mind  is  full  of  emo- 
tions of  right  or  wrong,  cannot  be  described  as  the  thought- 
content  of  a  purely  intellectual  being  exercising  his  '  per- 
sonal '  intelligence  —  far  from  it,  despite  the  finished 
analyses  of  the  Utilitarians. 

On  the  lower  plane  we  found  that  their  analyses,  being 
strictly  genetic,  depend  upon  the  validity  of  the  reduction 
of  the  sympathetic  impulses  to  the  egoistic  ones.  This 
reduction  is  shown  to  be  quite  incorrect  by  all  the  facts 
now  presented,  which  prove  that  the  two  tendencies  extend 
alike  down  into  the  life  of  the  animals.  On  this  higher 
plane  the  attempt  to  reduce  the  ethical  forms  of  action  to 
those  of  personal  reflective  intelligence,  goes  no  further 
than  is  justified  by  the  one-sided  uses  of  the  intelligence 
described  in  the  last  chapter. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  claim  that  the  generous  impulses, 
the  sympathies  and  altruistic  emotions,  give  exclusive 
content  to  the  ethical  consciousness  is  equally  mistaken. 
Sympathy  is  a  capricious  and  lawless  thing.  Suggesti- 
bility characterizes  the  sympathetic  psychosis  to  a  remark- 
able degree.  And  again,  sympathy  may  be  present  when 
there  is  no  adequate  deliberative  process  to  support  that 
adjustment  of  personal  claims  which  the  ethical  con- 
sciousness calls  for,  and  which  the  Utilitarians  so  prop- 
erly emphasize.  This  we  saw  on  the  lower  plane  above ; 
and  now  when  intelligence  is  born  we  find  it  promptly 
taking  the  helm  and  using  the  emotions  for  its  own  social 
ends.  So  if  reflective  sympathy  were  all  that  the  advocates 


Practical  Reason  323 

of  disinterestedness  in  conduct  had  to  fall  back  upon,  sorry 
would  be  their  case.  The  '  good '  would  characterize  the 
kind-hearted,  and  benevolence  would  sit  on  the  bench  of 
justice. 

We  come  to  see,  therefore,  in  view  of  the  incomplete- 
ness of  both  these  historical  theories,  that  we  are  under 
the  necessity  of  examining  anew  the  thought  of  self  found 
in  the  ethical  consciousness,  in  the  light  of  our  genetic 
results.  This  leads  us  to  discover  that  the  child  goes  on 
further  in  his  personal  growth,  and  really  reaches  a  thought 
of  an  ideal  self  which  overcomes  the  antithesis  between 
intelligent  self-seeking  and  reflective  sympathy.  It  would, 
indeed,  have  been  a  pity,  so  to  speak,  if  nature  had  led 
man  out  of  the  appearance  of  righteousness,  represented 
by  his  instincts,  into  the  scheming  devices  of  intelligence, 
and  had  then  taken  him  no  further.1 

On  this  point,  the  child's  growth  seems  to  throw  direct 
light.  The  Utilitarians  have  seen  it,  in  a  measure,  in  their 
emphasis  of  the  'word  of  command.'  But  they  have  failed 
to  see  that  there  is  a  new  organization  of  the  child's 
personal  thoughts,  —  an  organization  which  leads  to  the 
psychological  result  found,  in  us  adults,  in  the  sense  of 
law.  Law,  to  the  child,  is  personal  in  all  his  transition 
period  to  a  true  ethical  self ;  it  is  an  embodiment,  a  self, 
which  is  essentially '  projective,'  which  he  cannot  represent 
nor  anticipate  in  detail.  It  has  its  analogies,  its  illustra- 
tions, in  his  experience,  and  on  the  basis  of  these  experi- 

1  It  is  the  recognition  of  this  higher  reach  of  self-consciousness  which  has 
given  the  Intuitionalists  in  ethics  their  historical  advantage.  But  they  are  set 
against  the  genetic  point  of  view,  and  so  throw  away  their  best  resource. 
(Cf.  ray  article,  'The  Origin  of  a  Thing  and  its  Nature,'  Psych.  Rev.,  Vol.  II., 
1895,  PP-  55 '  fr-)-  The  Idealists,  on  the  other  hand,  revert  to  Utilitarianism 
by  making  the  ethical  ideal  an  intellectual  construction. 


324  His  Sentiments 

ences,  actively  appropriated  by  his  imitations,  he  grows  to 
understand  it  more  and  more.  But  it  is  always  an  ideal, 
an  unfulfilled  expectation  of  the  ultimate  developments  of 
character ;  and  as  such  it  is  a  forward-reaching  attitude, 
which  presents,  to  the  novelties  of  experience,  nets  for  the 
assimilation  of  the  newly  evolving  phases  of  personal  sug- 
gestion and  teaching. 

This  the  Idealists  have  taught ;  but  this  is  not  all. 

The  gradual  formation  in  the  child  of  the  thought  of 
self  which  is  law-abiding,  regular  in  its  behaviour,  not-at- 
all-capricious,  but  lawgiving  to  him  and  to  others  —  this 
thought  is  itself  subject  to  the  method  of  growth  that  we 
found  the  earlier  personal  thoughts  of  the  child  to  be. 
The  elements  of  it  must  also  continue  to  come  from  the 
personal  environment ;  they  must  be  assimilated  to  the 
earlier  thoughts ;  and  they  must  be  read  back  into  the  per- 
sons who  stand  in  relationship  to  the  agent.  And  when 
we  come  to  see  the  child  doing  these  things,  we  see  the 
formation  of  complexes,  in  his  attitudes,  which  are  the 
germs  of  the  forces  of  life  and  history.  But  this  is  no 
longer  simply  personal  intelligence,  the  exercise  of  which 
we  have  been  illustrating ;  it  is  now  ethical  intelligence ; 
thinking  for  complex  social  ends ;  finding  it  unnatural  and 
unreasonable  to  be  either  self-seeking  or  other-seeking  as 
such ;  but  finding  it  both  natural  and  reasonable  to  be 
dutiful.  This  is  the  highest  reach  of  intelligent  growth 
and  gives  its  true  significance,  as  I  take  it,  to  what  ethical 
writers  call  'practical  reason.' 

205.  We  need  only  add  certain  brief  corollaries.  There 
are  two  ways  that  the  child's  assimilation  of  personal  sug 
gestions  might  go  on.  His  egoistic,  aggressive  self  might 
assimilate  the  actions  of  other  persons  and  wrest  them  to 


Practical  Reason  325 

its  advantage ;  thus  leading  the  child  to  be  an  individualist 
pure  and  simple.  But  it  is  plain  that  even  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  this  might  be,  he  would  find  a  certain  embar- 
rassment. His  nature  has  a  fund  of  organic  emotional 
expressions  which  he  would  have  to  suppress  in  order  not 
to  be  generous  in  spite  of  himself.  He  would  have  to 
undo  the  progress  which  even  biological  evolution  has 
made  toward  a  social  type  of  person.  And  more  than 
this,  we  have  seen  that  the  two  sorts  of  impulse  rep- 
resented by  his  spontaneous  activities  are  both  equally 
reasonable  to  unreflective  intelligence ;  so  such  a  selfish 
person  would  have  to  indulge  in  generous  conduct  on 
occasion,  merely  in  order  to  be  selfish.  There  are  certain 
unpleasantnesses  of  continued  sympathy,  for  example, 
which  he  would  be  wise  to  avoid  by  relieving  the  dis- 
tresses which  are  thrust  upon  him.  This  picture  is  not 
a  speculative  and  artificial  one,  altogether.  There  are 
men  whose  reflection  does  lead  them  very  near  to  it,  — 
men  whose  generosities  are  remedial  agents  to  the  wounds 
of  their  selfishness.  But  this  is,  to  be  sure,  the  finished 
result  of  a  certain  sort  of  reflection. 

Another  way  that  the  child  might  develop  is  that  which 
would  constitute  him  a  purely  altruistic  being  —  a  being 
of  generosity  gone  on  to  perfection.  This  is,  however, 
also  contrary  to  the  facts  which  we  have  just  pointed 
out ;  facts  which  show  that  he  has  more  properly  a  selfish 
period,  and  that  he  gets  to  be  generous  only  by  the  con- 
temporary growth  of  the  alter  sense. 

The  way  he  does  grow  has  already  been  explained  at  some 
length,  and  only  a  brace  of  remarks  remains  to  be  made. 

206.  First,  the  'practical  reason '  is  a  thing  of  social 
growth.  This  is  to  say  that  it  springs  up  in  an  environ- 


326  His  Sentiments 

ment  to  which  it  expresses  intelligent  adaptation.  The 
sense  of  what  ought  to  be  cannot  be  divorced  from  the 
sense  of  what  is.  The  thing  that  ought  to  be  is  a  direct 
reflection  of  the  conditions  which  have  produced  the  know- 
ledge of  what  is ;  and  while  that  which  is,  and  is  known  to 
be,  sums  up  the  experience  of  the  individual  on  the  side 
of  science,  the  sense  of  a  possible  ought  expresses  with 
equal  reality  and  validity  the  trend  of  science  toward  a 
new  statement  of  further  social  conditions.1  All  this  is  so 
purely  a  matter  of  ethical  theory  that  I  cannot  stop  to 
follow  it  into  its  bearings;  but  an  essential  fact  for  social 
science  is  found  in  the  group  of  phenomena  upon  which 
the  ethical  intelligence  works.  This  namely :  when  the 
child  reflects  on  his  social  relationships  and  arrives  at  the 
beginning  of  a  habit  of  intelligent  submission  which  he 
then  in  turn  prescribes  to  others  also,  he  shows  a  new  sort 
of  end  not  before  found  in  him.  None  of  the  partial 
thoughts  —  none  of  his  private  schemes  —  is  now  his  end ; 
no  person  completely  fulfils  his  new  ideal,  his  ideal  of  per- 
sonality, long  or  very  well.  He  is  now  launched  on  a  sea 
of  intellectual  turmoil  and  endeavour,  which  by  its  very 
restlessness  and  change,  its  setting  of  ideals  and  its  viola- 
tion of  them,  make  social  life  and  progress  possible. 

He  now,  secondly,  turns  and  judges  all  things  from  this 
ideal  point  of  view.  Is  it  right  ?  is  now  his  question  of 
conduct ;  and,  Is  he  good  ?  his  question  of  man.  And 
his  own  disquieting  thoughts  of  himself  turn  on  the  same 
questions  as  applied  to  his  own  conduct  and  his  own  pres- 
ence. Nothing  is  so  urgent  in  his  life  as  the  call  to  duty  ; 
nothing  so  utterly  upsetting  as  the  penalties  which  attach, 
in  his  own  mind,  to  the  neglect  of  this  call.  It  would  not 

1  Cf.  Appendix  C. 


Religious  Sentiment  327 

be  possible  to  put  too  strongly  the  revolutionary  meaning 
of  this  intelligent  morality.  It  is  not  only  a  great  event  in 
life-history ;  it  marks  also  a  new  turn  in  social  develop- 
ment —  a  turn  away  from  the  intellectual  as  such  to  the 
social  as  such,  just  as  the  period  of  early  reflection  marks  a 
turn  away  from  the  instinctive  and  emotional  as  such  to  the 
intellectual  as  such. 

It  may  suffice  to  say  in  closing  that  it  is  by  the  develop- 
ment of  intelligence  that  this  has  been  tishered  in;  that 
there  is  therefore  no  possible  theoretical  divorce  between 
intelligence  and  sentiment ;  that  the  child  comes  up  into 
the  theatre  of  sentiment  by  a  natural  process  of  growth, 
which,  while  our  philosophy  may  not  have  anticipated  it, 
we  can  still  trace  when  we  see  it  taking  place  before  our 
eyes. 

§  5.    Religious  Sentiment 

A  further  differentiation  of  the  emotional  tone  arising 
about  the  ideal  constructions  which  we  have  been  con- 
sidering, manifests  itself  in  the  so-called  religious  senti- 
ments. In  classifying  these  as  sentiments,  I  am,  of  course, 
taking  the  position  that  religious  emotion  is  a  phase  of  the 
wider  mental  state  of  which  we  have  had  an  account  in 
the  earlier  pages  of  this  chapter.  I  need  not  dwell  at 
length,  therefore,  upon  the  origin  and  development  of  reli- 
gious sentiment ;  since  it  would  be  a  repetition  of  the  fore- 
going. But  certain  explanations  are  necessary  to  justify 
the  classification  of  these  sentiments  with  the  ethical  and 
social  sentiments,  and  to  mark  the  points  of  differentiation 
both  as  to  origin  and  as  to  nature. 

207.  Confining  ourselves  at  the  outset,  as  before,  to  the 
child's  development,  we  find  a  lack  of  objective  material  for 


328  His  Sentiments 

arriving  at  a  correct  view.  Taking  what  is  available  from 
our  knowledge  of  the  child's  conception  and  thought, 
however,  and  weighing  it  carefully  in  comparison  with 
adult  emotion  of  the  religious  kind,  we  may  make  certain 
remarks  which  suffice  at  least  to  show  that  the  inclusion 
of  the  religious  emotions  under  the  foregoing  account  of 
the  origin  of  the  ethical  and  social  sentiments  is  just. 

The  child's  earliest  expressions  of  reverence,  love,  devo- 
tion, trust,  dependence,  are  directed  to  the  actual  persons 
of  his  environment.  It  is  impossible,  in  these  early  mani- 
festations, to  distinguish  what  is  ethical  from  what  is  reli- 
gious ;  that  is,  it  is  impossible  to  see  any  marked  phase 
of  the  expressive  attitudes  of  the  child  which  can  be  called 
religious  in  a  distinctive  sense.  He  has  one  and  only  one 
series  of  attitudes  toward  the  persons  about  him :  that 
which  we  have  already  seen  in  his  personal  develop- 
ment. He  reaches  a  constantly  enlarging  sense  of  the 
richness  of  personality,  by  growing  up  into  the  lessons  set 
by  the  actions  of  others ;  and  he  attains  greater  intima- 
tions of  the  depth  and  possible  meaning  of  the  persons 
about  him  through  his  own  reactions  to  them.  So  the 
great  line  of  development  of  his  personal  self,  with  its 
more  and  more  refined  sense  of  personal  character  in 
others  —  this  is  his  one  and  only  source  of  sentiment. 

It  is  evident,  however,  as  was  said  above,  that  there 
are  two  great  phases  of  his  sentimental  life,  both  of  capi- 
tal importance  in  his  higher  growth.  One  is  the  subjec- 
tive phase,  the  growing  sense  of  a  self  which  is  he,  which 
he  realizes  when  he  has  emotions,  and  for  which  he  is 
responsible  when  he  uses  his  organism.  To  this  self  the 
ethical  emotions  attach,  since  they  arise  from  a  direct 
sense  of  the  relative  poverty  and  imperfection  of  this 


Religious  Sentiment  329 

self  as  compared  with  the  ideal  personality  which  is  the 
standard  of  personal  lawfulness  and  excellence.  The 
ethical  emotions  arise  about  my  actions,  my  will,  my  atti- 
tudes, my  selfishness ;  it  is  always  my,  my,  my,  or  your, 
your,  your;  the  deeds  of  single  concrete  persons.  The 
emphasis  is  on  the  subject-sense,  considered  distinctly  as 
subject.  The  very  essence  of  the  ethical  movement  is, 
as  we  saw  above,  just  the  lack  of  assimilation  of  the  self 
we  know  we  are  and  are  capable  of  being  at  the  present 
moment,  with  the  ideal  self  which  comes  from  all  our 
lessons  of  personal  obedience  and  law.  And  we  have 
also  seen  that  this  subjective  aspect  of  the  child's  growth 
has  had  its  prophetic  phases  even  in  the  instinctive  life. 
It  has  grown  up  by  utilizing  the  very  reactions  of  bash- 
fulness,  modesty,  sympathy,  etc.,  which  were  there  in  the 
lower  eras  of  mental  development. 

208.  But  all  our  study  has  shown  that  there  is  another, 
correlative  and  equally  important,  side  to  the  whole  growth 
into  the  full  sense  of  personality ;  the  phase  of  it  which 
refers  to  other  persons. 

This  takes  on  two  forms:  (i)  what  was  called  the  ejective 
person.  There  is  a  constant  outward  reference  of  the  per- 
sonality sense,  an  identification  of  it  with  real  outside  per- 
sons. And  with  this  is  always  associated  (2)  a  projective 
element :  an  element  which  the  child  has  never  adequately 
learned,  which  is  not  understood,  which  even  the  ideal 
derived  from  all  the  lessons  of  personal  intercourse  has  not 
availed  to  exhaust.  Personality  remains  after  all  a  pro- 
gressive, developing,  never-to-be-exhausted  thing.  Now  it 
is  these  two  phases  of  the  personal  sense  and  its  growth, 
I  think,  which  combine  to  give  the  basis  of  religious  senti- 
ment in  the  child.  So  there  are  two  elements  in  it. 


33O  His  Sentiments 

First,  there  is  the  tendency  to  make  ejective  the  ideal 
person  reached  by  the  road  already  traced ;  to  make  it 
real,  a  separate  corporate  personality.  There  must  be 
somewhere,  feels  the  child,  a  self  which  answers  to  all  the 
elements  of  the  law :  to  the  charity,  the  love,  the  beauty  of 
the  ideal,  whose  presence  in  my  thought  makes  my  own 
self  morally  so  incomplete.  It  is  not  a  new  movement  of 
the  mind.  We  have  found  it  always  present,  and  always 
necessarily  present,  if  the  child  is  to  attain  ethical  and 
social  personality  at  all,  in  the  proper  sense  of  those  terms. 
He  must  go  on  to  eject  this  highest  of  all  personal  thoughts 
just  as  he  does  the  lower  also.  The  great  spirit  becomes 
the  way  of  speaking  of  this  being  —  that  is,  it  is  the  race- 
child's  way. 

Second,  the  other  element  is  also  important  in  religious 
emotion ;  it  is  the  child's  expectation  of  yet  more  manifes- 
tations from  this  highest  of  all  persons  —  manifestations 
which  he  cannot  anticipate  nor  cope  with ;  which  he  must 
submit  to  when  they  come,  learn  of  only  when  they  have 
come,  propitiate  in  the  ways  that  please  persons,  and 
stand  in  awe  of  from  first  to  last.  This  is  also  not  at  all 
a  new  mental  movement ;  it  also  has  been  present  as  an 
essential  motif  of  his  progress  from  first  to  last.  The 
projective  elements  of  personality,  indeed,  were  his  very 
first  stock  in  trade,  his  first  social  copies  for  imitation. 
At  each  and  every  stage  of  his  growth  he  has  been  able 
to  make  progress  only  as  new  elements  of  personal  sug- 
gestion have  presented  themselves  to  him.  So  it  would 
be  quite  wrong  if  we  expected  this  attitude  of  expectation, 
accommodation ;  of  readiness  for  the  novel,  the  self-dis- 
turbing, the  ill-understood  ;  the  lesson  of  arbitrary  obedi- 
ence —  if  we  expected  all  this  to  stop  suddenly,  and 


Religious  Sentiment  331 

not  urge  itself  into  the  realm  of  the  mysterious.  Char- 
acter has  been  all  along  to  him  the  mysterious  thing.  The 
filling  in  of  the  mystery,  sufficiently  for  his  life-needs,  has 
taken .  all  his  pains ;  but  there  is  always  the  sphere  of 
mystery  still,  from  which  are  constantly  emerging  the 
unexpected  attributes  of  personal  character.  Here  is  the 
profounder  element  in  religious  emotion. 

The  ejective,  personifying  element,  which  the  history  of 
primitive  peoples  puts  so  clearly  in  evidence,  gives  positive 
content  to  the  religious  sentiment  as  mentioned  above; 
while  the  projective  or  negative  element,  as  seen  thus  in 
this  latter  aspect  of  the  child's  growth,  is  the  awe-inspiring 
something-over  of  mystery  equally  emphasized  in  the  rites 
and  cults  of  primitive  ceremonial.  Disregarding  now 
the  anthropological  point  of  view,1  we  may  examine  some 
of  the  more  prominent  emotional  movements  in  the  child 
which  this  general  characterization  of  the  religious  senti- 
ment leads  us  to  expect. 

209.  (i)  The  two  greater  factors  now  pointed  out.  may 
be  further  distinguished  in  reference  to  the  current  theories 
of  the  nature  of  religion ;  and  the  factor  which  arises  on 
the  side  of  content,  or  of  ejective  personality,  may  be 
designated,  as  the  school  of  Schleiermacher  have  done, 
by  the  general  phrase  'feeling  of  dependence.'  Paulsen,2 
in  his  excellent  treatment,  calls  this  side  of  the  religious 
life  the  side  or  element  of  'trust.'  Considering  the  great 
variety  of  stages  which  this  factor  in  the  religious  life  goes 
through  in  the  course  of  the  child's  religious  development, 
we  may  better  adhere  to  the  broader  phrase  of  Schleier- 

1  Intentionally,  from  lack  of  personal  fitness;  the  anthropological  references 
made  being  suggestions,  which  are  liable  to  criticism  from  experts. 

2  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  Bk.  I.,  Chap.  II.,  9. 


332  His  Sentiments 

machef,  and  discuss  the  matter  as  below  under  the  head- 
ing '  Feeling  of  Dependence.' 

(2)  The  other  factor,  which  finds  its  raison  d'etre,  as 
we  have  seen,  in  the  projective  tendency  in  personal 
growth,  corresponds  to  the  element  of  the  religious  life 
which  the  students  of  anthropology,  such  as  Spencer, 
Tylor,  etc.,  call  '  wonder,'  and  which  Paulsen  generalizes 
under  the  heading  of  '  fear.'  Neither  of  these  terms  seems 
to  me  sufficiently  general  to  cover  the  wide  projective 
consciousness  in  all  the  course  of  development  through 
which  the  child  and  man  go ;  so  I  shall  discuss  this  aspect 
of  religion  under  the  general  head  of  '  Feeling  of  Mystery,' 
only  venturing  to  do  this  for  the  reason  that  we  are  then 
enabled  to  classify  together  all  the  phenomena  which  the 
development  of  this  side  of  the  religious  consciousness 
really  shows  at  whatever  stage.1 

These  two  general  topics  may  therefore  be  taken  up  in 
order. 

210.  (i)  Feeling  of  Dependence.  —  It  is  only  necessary 
to  recall  the  stages  in  the  development  of  the  personal 
sense  to  see  what  epochs  this  aspect  as  religious  emotion 
may  be  expected  to  show.  That  these  epochs  are  not 
only  legitimate  inferences  from  the  fact  that  we  are  deal- 
ing with  the  ejective  phase  of  personal  growth  which  is 
present  all  through  the  course  of  the  child's  development, 
but  that  they  really  are,  is  observable  in  the  child's  life.2 
The  stages  through  which  the  child's  ejective  sense  of 
personality  goes,  and  some  of  the  facts  which  justify  the 

1  It  will  be  seen  lower  down  that  by  this  method  we  escape  the  intermina- 
ble discussions  which  turn  about  a  '  definition  '  of  religion.  Such  definitions 
usually  characterize  different  stages  of  the  movement. 

'-'  What  is  said  of  children  in  the  following  pages  is  based  on  close  observa- 
tion, with  records,  in  my  own  family. 


Religious  Sentiment  333 

delineation,  have  already  been  presented  above ;  and  we 
may  recall  that  we  found  reason  for  saying  that  three 
such  stages  might  well  be  distinguished,  arising  from  the 
epochal  changes  found  respectively  at  the  dawn  of  intelli- 
gence in  the  first  place,  and  at  the  dawn  of  the  ethical 
sense  in  the  second  place.  Both  of  these  events  mark 
great  deviations  of  development  from  its  previous  course. 
The  rise  of  the  intelligence  brings  in  the  reflective  and 
intentional  co-operation  of  men  together  for  social  pur- 
poses, and  thus  supersedes  the  organic  and  instinctively 
gregarious  co-operations  of  the  animals.  The  develop- 
ment of  emotion  through  this  great  transition  has  also 
claimed  our  attention.  The  other  great  transition,  i.e., 
from  the  merely  intelligent  to  the  ethical  as  such,  has 
been  the  topic  of  the  present  chapter;  and  we  found 
reason  to  conclude  that  it  again  marks  a  striking  deviation 
of  the  development  of  mankind  from  the  purely  intel- 
lectual uses  of  social  co-operation  to  the  truly  social  uses 
in  which  the  ethical  and  social  ideal  becomes,  in  virtue  of 
its  own  intrinsic  moving  force  in  every  man,  the  end  of 
progress.  If,  now,  the  religious  emotions  really  have  their 
root,  in  part,  in  the  ejective  movement  of  the  mind,  which 
continues  to  play  an  essential  role  all  through  this  devel- 
opment, then  we  should  expect  to  find  three  great  epochs 
in  the  feeling  of  religious  dependence :  first,  the  epoch 
of  instinctive  or  spontaneous  dependence  upon  personality, 
as  the  child  apprehends  it ;  second,  a  period  of  depend- 
ence connected  with  the  exercise  of  his  intellectual  activi- 
ties, what  might  be  called  the  period  of  rational  or 
intellectual  dependence ;  and  third,  the  period  in  which 
his  ethical  sense  calls  upon  him  to  eject  the  ideal  thought 
of  self,  and  clothe  it  with  the  attributes  of  ethical  worth  — 


334  ff*s  Sentiments 

the  period  of  ethical  dependence.  We  may  look,  for  a 
little,  at  the  facts  of  the  child's  development  with  these 
distinctions  in  view. 

211.  (i)  The  period  in  which  the  child's  sense  of  per- 
sonality leads  him  to  what  we  are  calling  '  spontaneous 
dependence '  is  generally  recognized.  It  has  been  called 
by  different  names  according  to  various  ways  of  approach 
to  it.  Bain  finds  in  the  child  a  certain  '  primitive  credu- 
lity ' ;  poets  speak  of  the  beautiful  trustfulness  of  chil- 
dren ;  parents,  if  they  are  alive  to  their  responsibilities, 
are  weighed  down  with  the  sense  that  the  child  tends  to 
make  quasi-deities  of  the  father  and  mother.  The  period 
begins  in  the  child  as  soon  as  he  starts  in  his  career  of 
discrimination  of  persons.  The  actual  person  whom  he 
selects  as  the  ooject  of  this  primitive  emotion  of  depend- 
ence depends  upon  the  incidents  of  his  rearing.  The 
father  is  more  often  his  first  divinity,  since  he  is  not 
exposed  so  constantly  to  the  child's  scrutiny,  is  often  the 
bringer  of  the  gift  or  the  healer  of  the  larger  woes  of  the 
household,  and  also  because  the  lessons  of  obedience  are 
likely  to  be  enforced  in  his  case  by  sterner  and  more 
inflexible  sanctions.  All  the  evidence  which  is  reported 
in  the  books  on  child-psychology  to  show  that  father,  or 
mother,  or  whoever  else,  is  such  an  ideal  personality,  is  in 
point  here.  For  it  is  just  the  emotional  side  of  this 
manner  of  reading  of  a  real  person,  in  which  this  earliest 
form  of  quasi-religious  dependence  consists.  The  child's 
constructions  of  deity  in  answer  to  questions  as  to  what 
God  is,  etc.,  all  bear  out  the  truth  that  his  anthropomor- 
phism at  this  period  is  not  in  any  sense  an  abstract  thing ; 
for  all  the  concrete  content  that  his  deity  notion  has  is 
made  up,  as  his  whole  personality  concept  is,  from  the 


Religious  Sentiment  335 

imitative  copy-elements  which  he  has  learned  from  persons, 
stories,  and  events.1 

It  is  directly  in  line  with  this  interpretation,  also,  that 
we  find  the  child  showing  the  remarkable  tendency  to 
myth-making,  liking  for  fairy-stories,  love  of  heroes  and 
their  exploits,  in  which  the  ideal  man  or  monster  is  always 
victorious,  or  in  which  the  good  divinity  overcomes  the 
evil  monster.  All  this  has  its  emotional  side,  and  the  sort 
of  emotion  is  in  kind  that  which,  in  its  later  manifestations, 
when  the  ideal  has  become  more  refined,  we  call  religious. 

At  the  start,  the  sense  of  dependence  takes  its  rise,  I 
think,  in  actual  physical  helplessness.  The  child  learns 
the  distinction  between  persons  and  things  largely  through 
the  stress  of  his  physical  needs  and  the  succour  which 
persons  bring  him.  Persons  then  go  on  to  be  the  re- 
sourceful elements  of  his  environment,  the  source  of  the 
gratification  of  appetites  and  of  the  alleviation  of  dis- 
tresses. There  springs  up  in  the  child  the  sense  that  in 
the  presence  of  mother  or  nurse  there  is  comfort,  and  in 
her  absence  discomfort.  It  is  only  a  step  further  to  see 
that  this  attribution  of  relief-agency  —  so  to  characterize 
the  good  person  in  the  environment  —  is  a  large  part 
of  the  child's  actual  thought  of  persons.  And  this  expec- 
tation of  help,  in  its  various  forms  —  shown  in  reflex 
movements  toward  the  person,  with  sense  of  pleasures  in 
anticipation,  with  the  accompanying  stress  of  present 
unrelieved  pain  —  all  terminates  on  the  presentation  or 
memory  of  persons.  This  is  the  rudimentary  feeling  of 
dependence. 

212.   (2)  A  little  later  on  the  child  finds  awaiting  him 

1  See  Barnes'  {Fed.  Sent.,  II.  3)  and  Sully's  (loc.  cit.,  p.  I2O  if.)  citations 
of  children's  theological  fancies. 


336  His  Sentiments 

certain  possibilities  which  are  not  entirely  physical.  His 
expectations  are  not  always  fulfilled  in  physical  terms. 
There  appears  a  certain  capriciousness  in  the  actions  of 
persons,  and  it  taxes  his  dawning  intelligence  to  reduce 
it  to  any  sort  of  order.  And  the  influence  upon  his 
dependence  of  the  newer  and  less  physical  conditions  of 
his  personal  intercourse  with  others,  issues  from  certain 
outstanding  realities.  Punishment  is  one  of  the  rude 
awakening  factors  in  the  growth  of  dependence.  All 
sanctions  and  penalties  which  issue  from  persons  tend  at 
once  to  stimulate  his  intelligence,  and  to  increase  his 
sense  of  his  own  helplessness.  It  is  just  his  helplessness 
in  the  presence  of  natural  things  which  is  now  reinstated 
on  the  higher  personal  plane.  He  learns  now  to  think  of 
the  other  not  only  as  a  being  who  succours  and  relieves, 
but  also  as  one  who  snubs,  pains,  and  refuses  to  relieve. 
And  this  element  of  capriciousness,  or  lack  of  order  in 
the  behaviour  of  others,  is  for  a  long  time,  I  think,  the 
dominating  motive  on  this  side  of  the  developing  religious 
sense.  It  comes  up  more  particularly  below,  in  the  con- 
sideration of  the  '  projective '  element  of  his  growth  in 
religious  personality. 

With  punishment,  however,  and  the  obedience  which  he 
learns  through  it,  and  with  instruction,  comes  the  dawning 
of  the  more  intellectual  period.  Just  as  in  his  spontane- 
ous imitations  the  child  reaches  his  own  inventive  inter- 
pretations of  events,  and  so  learns  to  be  intelligent ;  so 
by  obedience  he  is  pushed  along  the  same  road.  But  in 
obedience  the  emphasis  of  the  personality  element  is 
differently  placed.  In  imitation  the  child  gets  an  em- 
phasis laid  on  his  own  initiative,  his  own  power,  his  own 
private  self-worth  and  capacity ;  but  in  obedience  the  per- 


Religious  Sentiment  337 

sonal  emphasis  is  all  on  the  personality  whom  he  is  forced 
to  obey ;  on  the  '  law '  element,  as  we  saw  in  considering 
his  ethical  growth.  He  stands  and  waits  for  the  com- 
mand with  fear  and  trembling,  and  then  gazes  upon  the 
terrible  other  person  for. reward  or  blame  of  his  result. 

Then  with  this  transfer  of  the  emphasis  in  his  develop- 
ment, from  the  annoyance  of  physical  pain  and  depend- 
ence for  its  relief,  to  the  annoyance,  embarrassment,  con- 
fusion of  personal  imitation  and  obedience,  and  with  the 
lack  of  information  to  anticipate  results,  there  comes  the 
transfer  of  the  relief  to  be  expected  from  the  sphere  of 
physical  comfort  to  that  of  intelligent  apprehension  and 
instruction.  The  child  comes  to  look  upon  the  father  or 
mother  as  the  all-wise,  the  explainer  of  problems,  the 
solver  of  riddles.  His  sense  of  dependence  comes  to  be 
confidence  in  a  higher  intelligence  than  his,  and  this 
higher  intelligence  he  places,  of  course,  in  the  persons 
who  relieve  his  uncertainties,  who  compel  his  obediences, 
who  administer  sanctions,  who  give  explanations. 

213.  This  development  of  the  sense  of  dependence, 
from  the  physical  up  into  the  intellectual  realm,  serves 
to  bring  out  two  very  marked  characteristics  of  the  child's 
thought  of  persons.  We  find  the  child's  thought  ex- 
pressed in  two  great  categories,  say  from  his  third  year 
on  into  his  youth :  the  categories  of  cause  and  design. 
Statistical  inquiries  into  the  way  children  define  objects J 
show  these  two  great  features :  the  causal  definition  tend- 
ing to  develop  before  the  teleological  definition.  The 
causal  definition  tends  to  be  stated  in  terms  of  some  more 
or  less  comprehended  personal  agency.  A  table  is  '  the 
thing  that  the  carpenter  makes ' :  the  bread  is  '  what  the 

1  Binet,  Barnes, 
z 


338  His  Sentiments 

cook  bakes':  the  doll  is  'what  I  play  with,'  etc.  This 
shows  the  very  strong  tendency  to  think  of  a  person 
in  terms  of  what  he  does,  of  his  agency,  and  to  think 
of  things  as  subordinate  to  this  all-embracing  causal  activ- 
ity of  persons.  This  gets  a  response  in  emotion  and  per- 
sonal attitude  from  the  child  himself,  and  this  attitude  is 
one  of  dependence  upon  the  causal  activity  of  the  persons 
whom  he  knows. 

Then  there  comes,  a  little  later,  the  period  of  design : 
springing,  as  it  seems  to  me,  from  the  fact  that  the 
father's  explanations  follow  generally  only  after  the  exhibi- 
tions of  his  power.  The  father  explains  why  he  did  this 
or  that ;  leads  the  child  to  construe  results  in  terms  of 
their  utilities,  of  means  to  end,  of  design ;  and  the  child 
quickly  generalizes  the  cases,  reaching  the  wider  point 
of  expectation  that  everything  will  have  its  purpose,  and 
that  the  person  who  is  greatest  can  give  him  the  teleologi- 
cal  key  to  each  and  every  situation. 

214.  Both  of  these  phases  of  the  child's  intelligent 
growth  in  his  sense  of  dependence  upon  other  persons 
for  the  solution  of  his  difficulties,  arc  strikingly  seen  in 
the  questions  asked  by  the  mild  in  the  epoch  called  the 
'questioning  period.'1 

His  questioning  takes  on  two  very  distinct  phases ;  the 
first  directed  to  the  'what,'  and  the  second  to  the  'why.' 
'  Wa'  dat,  Wadie  ? '  ('  what's  that,  Father  ? ')  was  the  cry  of 
the  house  when  my  child  H.  had  begun  the  first  period; 
and  a  little  later,  after  language  was  further  on  in  its 
development,  and  when  the  inquiring  turn  of  mind  had 
become  more  intelligent,  '  why  ? '  was  the  word  which  rang 

1  Sally  (/of.  fit.,  p.  75  f.)  gives  many  entertaining  anecdotes  from  the  child'> 
'  questioning  age.' 


Religious  Sentiment  339 

incessantly  in  our  ears.  In  the  first  stage  of  this  'ques- 
tioning mania'  the  causal  tendency  is  prominent,  inasmuch 
as  the  child  tends  to  be  satisfied  with  any  'what'  which 
reveals  some  sort  of  living  agency.  In  the  later  'why' 
period,  this  tendency  to  seek  personal  agencies  so  blankly 
retreats  somewhat,  only  to  conceal  itself  behind  the  notion 
of  design.  It  is  no  longer  enough  to  tell  the  child  that 
a  thing  is  what  it  is,  even  though  the  answer  convey  the 
idea  of  a  living  person  or  animal  acting  in  his  presence ; 
he  goes  further  and  seeks  the  reason  that  the  action  is 
what  it  is.  To  be  sure,  even  in  this  later  period,  the 
anthropomorphic  solution  is  the  most  satisfying  one  to 
every  'why.'  If  a  personal  use  can  be  pointed  out,  some 
human  or  animal  need  which  justifies  the  action  of  which 
he  asks  the  why,  then  so  much  the  more  satisfactory  is 
the  answer  to  the  child. 

The  bearing  of  the  two  main  ideas  which  the  child 
uses  in  this  process  of  ejecting  personality  into  his 
environment  —  the  ideas  of  cause  or  power  and  design 
—  upon  the  character  of  his  own  dawning  religious  senti- 
ment is  evident  enough  in  itself,  and  becomes  increasingly 
so  in  its  anthropological  aspect.1  They  both  illustrate 
dependence ;  but  they  differ  in  respect  to  the  stage  of 
development  which  they  respectively  characterize.  In 
the  sense  of  cause  or  personal  power  the  physical  anal- 
ogy predominates ;  the  force  of  a  person  in  compelling 
obedience  and  bringing  succour  is,  in  the  main,  physical 
force.  And  the  power  illustrated  in  the  general  answer 

1  So  much,  without  meaning  to  discuss  the  exact  function  of  the  personify- 
ing tendency  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  on  which  one  may  consult  Caird, 
Evolution  of  Religion,  Sects.  VIII.  and  XL,  Tylor,  loc.  cit.,  Chaps.  XIV.  and 
XV.,  and  Paulsen,  loc.  cit.,  p.  266  f.  See  also  Appendix  F. 


340  His  Sentiments 

to  the  '  what '  question  terminates  in  the  immediate  envi- 
ronment of  fact,  either  physical  or  mental.  But  the  other 
idea,  that  of  design,  which  is  seen  in  the  series  of  '  why ' 
questions,  shows  the  dependence  of  the  child  with  refer- 
ence to  intellectual  explanations.  It  illustrates  the  diffi- 
culties into  which  his  dawning  intelligence  gets ;  and  so 
the  emotion  which  he  has  in  this  case  is  a  higher  and 
more  complex  thing.  The  dependence  on  persons  for 
information  as  to  facts  is,  of  course,  intelligent;  but  that 
which  seeks,  from  the  same  persons,  explanations  as  to 
the  '  why '  of  the  facts,  denotes  a  further  and  more  human 
attainment.  It  is  then  in  the  latter,  mainly,  with  the  use 
that  the  child  makes  of  his  own  intelligence  in  a  reciprocal 
way  upon  it,  that  we  find  realized  the  second  great  stage 
in  the  ejective  development  of  religious  dependence. 

215.  It  is  noteworthy,  also,  that  at  this  stage  of  the 
development  of  the  sense  of  dependence,  there  is  little 
or  no  ethical  ingredient.  That  is  a  later  thing.  The 
evidence  that  it  is  so  is  found  in  the  child's  actions  in 
this  intellectual  period.  We  saw  earlier  that  the  child 
is  apt  to  make  all  the  use  of  his  intelligence  that  he 
can  in  what  we  would  describe,  from  our  more  advanced 
point  of  view,  as  an  unethical  way.  The  child  is,  from 
the  third  to  the  fifth  year  or  longer,  more  intelligent  than 
ethical;  and  he  does  not  hesitate  to  use  his  intelligence 
for  purposes  of  personal  gratification,  and  for  the  decep- 
tion of  other  persons.  He  anticipates  his  father's  reproof, 
and  to  avoid  it  covers  his  deed  under  a  mask  of  innocence, 
or  creates  an  actual  device  to  avert  punishment  or  to  gain 
undeserved  reward.  He  uses  his  little  brother  as  a  screen 
for  his  own  sins,  laying  the  blame  for  wrong-doing  where 
it  does  not  belong,  claiming  as  his  own  actions  which  he 


Religious  Sentiment  341 

did  not  perform,  concealing  his  own  thoughts  and  actions 
when  it  is  to  his  advantage  to  do  so.1  All  of  this  is 
the  reverse  side  of  his  feeling  of  dependence.  If  his 
father  did  not  have  the  power  or  the  will  to  punish  or 
to  reward  him,  all  motive  for  guile,  deception,  double- 
dealing,  pride-exhibition,  vicarious  claims,  etc.,  would  be 
taken  away,  as  a  matter  of  course. 

This  is  proved  by  the  actual  differences  of  attitude 
which  the  child  strikes  in  the  presence  of  different  per- 
sons. He  does  not  resort  to  the  same  social  uses  of  his 
intelligence  in  the  presence  of  persons  who  do  not  have 
the  authority  or  the  strength  to  inflict  penalties  or  admin- 
ister rewards.  He  shows  an  altogether  rational  degree  of 
independence  as  to  their  opinions  of  him  and  of  his  con- 
duct. Often  the  differences  of  attitude  toward  the  father 
and  mother,  respectively,  on  the  part  of  the  same  child, 
show  which  it  is  that  excites  the  strong  feeling  of  depend- 
ence of  this  intellectual  kind. 

There  seems  to  be,  therefore,  in  the  life  of  the  child 
a  period  of  development  in  which  circumvention,  pro- 
pitiation, deception,  of  the  object  of  his  fear  and  depend- 
ence characterize  his  quasi-religious  attitude.  It  must 
be  called,  I  think,  in  a  broad  sense  religious,  if  we  are 
to  recognize  it  as  a  real  phase  of  the  feeling  of  depend- 
ence which  characterizes  religion.  Of  course  we  may 
define  religion  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  presence 
of  a  developed  ethical  sense  necessary  to  it ;  but  then  we 
find  the  difficulty,  which  has  confronted  the  historian  no 
less  than  the  theorist,  of  disposing  of  those  phases  of 
primitive  rite  and  ceremony  which  are  mainly  self-defen- 

1  See  the  passage  above  in  the  chapter  on  '  Intelligence '  (Chap.  VII., 
§3). 


342  His  Sentiments 

sive,  propitiatory,  and  egoistic,  both  in  the  child  and 
especially  in  the  race ;  and  which  show  the  tendency  of 
the  devotee  to  escape  the  penalties  of  his  deeds  by  decep- 
tion, sacrifice,  vicarious  substitution,  or  some  other  conven- 
tional or  intellectual  device,  which  he  has  found  effectual 
in  his  intercourse  with  his  fellow-men.  The  same  need 
of  recognizing  some  such  mainly  intellectual  —  largely 
unethical  —  period  in  the  development  of  the  religious 
sense,  is  seen  also  on  the  side  of  the  other  element 
which  goes  to  constitute  it  —  the  element  of  mystery  — 
which  is  to  be  spoken  of  in  a  moment. 

216.  (3)  The  final  form  which  the  feeling  of  dependence 
takes  on  is  ethical.  It  does  not  arise  until  the  fulness  of 
time  has  come  in  the  child's  growth.  The  mental  move- 
ments which  we  have  seen  to  be  necessary  to  ethical 
sentiment  —  the  construction  of  the  material  of  personal- 
ity in  the  general  way  called  ideal  —  must  be  there  in 
sufficient  force  to  arouse  a  positive  attitude  of  mind 
toward  the  persons  who  illustrate  the  good  in  the  social 
environment. 

When  it  comes,  it  takes  on  the  several  forms  which 
theological  writers  mention,  forms  which  are  such  acute 
factors  in  the  religious  life  of  mankind.  The  feeling  of 
ethical  dependence  involves  the  same  personal  helpless- 
ness which  the  individual  felt  before  in  the  presence  of  the 
excellence  of  the  other  person,  except  that  it  is  now  also 
ethical  helplessness:  defect  of  a  permanent  kind  in  the 
presence  of  the  ideal  and  its  demands.  This  takes  the 
form  of  the  sense  of  sinfulness,  as  soon  as  the  matter  of 
obligation  crystallizes  in  the  presence  of  law.  And  with 
the  sense  of  sin  come  various  qualitative  shadings  of  emo- 
tion ;  such  as  remorse,  moral  shame,  repentance,  guilt,  etc. 


Religious  Sentiment  343 

All  this  is  emphatically  an  ethical  ingredient  in  the  sense 
of  religious  dependence. 

Then  there  is  with  it  the  element  of  undeserved  help 
and  favour  which  constitute  the  ejective  elements  as  such, 
characterized  in  theology  as  grace  and  mercy.  Here  we 
find  the  strains  of  emotion  felt  as  sense  of  forgiveness, 
redemption,  moral  acceptance  and  favour,  religious  as- 
surance, peace,  communion  with  and  reliance  on  the 
Higher-than-we.  In  the  lower  stages,  the  need  is  physi- 
cal and  then  intellectual ;  and  the  dependence  is  for  the 
providing  of  these  needs  —  the  supplementing  of  our  per- 
sonal inadequacy  by  physical  and  intellectual  succour  and 
help.  Here,  on  the  contrary,  the  need  is  ethical ;  and 
the  dependence  is  for  ethical  succour  and  support.  In 
this  dependence  upon  the  other  for  those  ethical  qualifi- 
cations which  we  feel  to  be  incomplete  and  inadequate  in 
ourselves,  the  full  religious  sense  of  dependence  comes  to 
view,  and  takes  its  place  in  the  development  of  man  as 
a  factor  of  the  first  importance.  And  this  in  two  ways. 

217.  First,  it  is  now  that  the  ejective  personality  toward 
which  the  religious  emotions  are  directed  takes  on  the 
predicates  of  ethical  meaning.  In  the  earlier  stages,  to 
be  sure,  the  object  of  worship,  reverence,  and  reliance 
has  been  personal ;  the  growth  of  the  sense  of  person- 
ality lies  at  the  basis  of  the  whole  growth  of  the  sense 
of  dependence.  But  the  person  thought  of  has  not  been 
—  by  necessity  could  not  be — richer  or  fuller  than  the 
thought  of  self  which  the  worshipper  himself  has  attained  ; 
and  that  has  not  hitherto  been  ethical.  The  limitations  of 
personality  have  been  proscribed  by  the  worshipper's  own 
personal  growth  :  how  can  he  reach  a  thought  of  person- 
ality who  shall  be  ethical  before  the  dawn  of  that  ideal 


344  ff*s  Sentiments 

self  in  comparison  with  which  the  very  sense  of  ethical 
worth  takes  its  rise  ? 

In  the  physical  period,  we  should  expect  the  deity  to 
be  the  great  man,  the  powerful  hero,  the  giant,  the  being 
most  in  likeness  to  the  greater  manifestations  of  physical 
nature,  while  yet  personal.  This  to  the  child  is  likely  to 
be  his  own  father,  the  potentate  of  his  circle.  In  the 
later  intellectual  period,  again,  the  deity  takes  on  the 
attributes  of  cause,  arch-plotter,  and  designer,  a  being 
in  which  wisdom  waits  on  wrath,  and  fore-knowledge 
ministers  vengeance  to  enemies  and  favours  to  friends. 
Hence  the  singular  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  child 
in  this  period  to  anticipate  the  dictates  of  authority  and 
propitiate  its  demands  in  advance  —  a  period  which  has 
its  illustrations  also  in  some  of  the  most  remarkable 
religious  rites  of  the  race.  Then  comes  the  ethical 
period  with  its  great  overturning  of  things  in  the  presence 
of  new  ideals.  The  object  of  reverence,  awe,  worship, 
now  becomes  also  a  good  person,  a  person  who  embodies 
the  law  of  duty  and  right ;  and  the  sense  of  a  deity  who 
exhibits  ethical  perfection  comes  to  be  the  permanent 
acquisition  of  child  and  man. 

218.  Second,  beside  this  progress  in  the  way  the  object 
of  religious  emotion  is  thought  —  from  the  physical  up 
through  the  intellectual  categories  of  cause  and  design  to 
the  ethical  forms  which  characterize  the  higher  religious 
consciousness  —  another  general  thing  may  be  remarked 
on  the  social  side.  We  must  say,  of  course,  in  regard 
to  the  social  value  of  the  sense  of  dependence,  what 
we  have  said  of  its  religious  value  —  that  it  varies  in 
depth  and  meaning  with  the  stages  of  development  of  the 
child's  sense  of  personality.  In  the  earliest  stage  —  that 


Religious  Sentiment  345 

of  the  first  distinction  between  persons  and  things  in 
the  environment  —  there  is  no  clear  separation  of  the 
influence  of  persons,  in  its  results,  from  the  action  of 
the  physical  agents.  The  amount  of  community  and  co- 
operation which  is  present  is  largely  instinctive  and  spon- 
taneous. In  the  next  later  period,  that  called  intellect- 
ual, the  intelligent  co-operation  of  the  child  with  others 
takes  the  form  of  a  recognition  of  the  others  as  like 
himself.  They  are  creatures  who  suffer  and  enjoy,  very 
largely ;  who  use  their  intelligence  for  personal  ends  as 
he  uses  his ;  and  who,  not  being  subject  to  general  laws, 
are  essentially  capricious.  But  now  in  the  last  period 
we  find  the  social  feature  becoming  reflective.  As  we 
saw  in  considering  the  ethical  sentiments  as  such,  the 
ideal  self,  which  the  ethical  attitude  presupposes,  involves 
the  thought  of  another  as  having  the  same  thoughts  of 
himself  and  the  world  as  the  present  thinker  has.  I 
think  of  myself  with  praise  or  blame  in  a  completely 
ethical  way,  only  as  I  think  of  the  other  self,  the  alter, 
as  thinking  of  me  with  equal  praise  or  blame.  This 
attribution  to  the  other  of  the  same  reference  of  par- 
ticular actions,  events,  etc.,  to  ideal  standards,  makes  the 
social  ingredient  an  essential  factor  in  ejective  personality 
in  the  ethical  world ;  a  place  which  it  does  not  hold  in 
either  of  the  lower  stages  in  which  we  have  found  rudimen- 
tary forms  of  the  religious  feeling  of  dependence.  The 
ejective  ideal  self  is  now  thought,  necessarily,  as  in  relation 
to  me  and  to  you.  The  religious  bond  becomes  a  social 
relationship.  Deity  is  thought  as  a  supreme  '  Socius,'  a 
being  who  makes  certain  social  and  personal  require- 
ments of  each  individual  person.  And  this  is  to  say 
that  the  deity  cannot  be  thought  out  of  this  relation- 


346  His  St'ni  intents 

ship.  To  attempt  it  is  to  attempt  to  think  of  a  self 
without  the  ethical  attributes.  Just  in  so  far  as  a  per- 
son who  has  himself  reached  the  ethical  stage  of  devel- 
opment attempts  this,  he  constructs  a  deity  which  he 
himself  cannot  worship,  a  deity  which  can  only  excite 
the  sort  of  physical  or  intellectual  compulsion  which 
arouses  the  lower  forms  of  the  feeling  of  dependence 
in  the  undeveloped  child ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  deity 
becomes  an  intellectual  abstraction. 

It  is  only  in  this  meaning,  I  think  —  this  social  and 
ethical  meaning  —  that  deity  can  be  considered  what  we 
mean  generally  by  the  term  'divine.'  This  term  sums  up 
the  requirements  of  the  religious  consciousness.  It  carries 
both  (i)  the  physical  and  (2)  the  intellectual  reference, 
under  the  attributes  of  omnipotence  and  omniscience  /  but 
(3)  it  goes  beyond  these  in  having  the  ethical  and  social 
meanings  of  justice,  mercy,  grace,  love,  righteousness,  which 
exhibit  the  feeling  of  dependence  in  its  highest  and  richest 
form. 

219.  Finally,  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  tracing  of  this 
feeling  of  dependence  through  the  development  of  the 
child  reveals  everywhere  the  essential  anthropomorphism 
of  the  religious  consciousness.  The  idea  of  personality  sets 
form  everywhere  to  the  thought  of  the  being  to  be  wor- 
shipped ;  and  the  only  possible  thought  of  a  person  to  the 
child  is  a  thought  which  goes  out  from  his  own  sense 
of  self.  This  supplies  the  form  of  the  notion  of  deity 
throughout.  We  shall  see,  however,  that  the  other  ele- 
ment involved  in  religious  emotion  —  the  element  of 
mystery  —  tends  to  set  limits  to  the  anthropomorphizing 
tendency,  while  it  nevertheless  springs  directly  from  it. 
To  that  aspect  of  religious  sentiment  we  may  now  turn. 


Religious  Sentiment  347 

220.  (2)  Feeling  of  Mystery.     The  feature  of  religious 
emotion    which    is    indicated    by   this   phrase   is   equally 
striking  with  that  already  treated  under  the  head  of  de- 
pendence.    Especially  do  writers  on  the  history  of  religion 
find  it  necessary  to  dwell  on  the  element  of  mystery  which 
the  products  of  the  religious  consciousness  of  mankind 
manifest.     From  this  point  of  view,  as  well  as  from  one's 
private  appreciation  of  the  religious  state  of  mind  for  him- 
self, we  are  led  to  think  that  the  phase  of  the  religious 
experience  which   is  usually  covered   by  the  terms  awe, 
fear,  reverence,  adoration,  etc.,  is  very  essential  and  must 
have  had  an   important  place  in  the  entire  development 
of  this  great  motive  in  human  experience.     Turning  to  the 
child's  development,  we  find  this  expectation  fully  realized. 

221.  In    each    of    the    periods   of    the   child's   growth 
already  mentioned  as  respectively  the  'spontaneous,'  the 
'  intellectual,'  and  the  '  ethical,'  we  find  very  striking  mani- 
festations of  the  sense  of  mystery.     In  the  first  period, 
in  which  the  movements  of  the  mind  are  largely  under 
the  lead  of  the  instinctive  and  hereditary  impulses  mani- 
festing   themselves    in    physical    actions,    the    sense    of 
mystery    is,    unlike    that    of    dependence,    very    undevel- 
oped.     The  child  suffers  from  the  unexpected  and   the 
unknown,   or   enjoys   its   sudden    revelations   when    they 
are  of  an  agreeable  kind ;  but,  inasmuch  as  these  events, 
in  order  to  affect  him  at  all,  must  be  largely  in  the  physi- 
cal world,  the  reactions  which  they  occasion  are  in  great 
measure  expressive  of  their  immediate  impressions  on  his 
organism. 

We  very  soon  begin  to  find,  however,  a  certain  sense 
of  the  possible  hidden  meaning  of  phenomena  revealing 
itself  in  the  child.  The  fear  of  the  dark  may  be  an  in- 


348  His  Sentiments 

stance  in  point.  It  seems  to  have  no  adequate  explana- 
tion in  the  child's  actual  experiences.  And  even  though 
we  should  find  that  the  child  gets  this  fear  by  association, 
the  dark  would  still  seem  to  have  its  fearful  aspect  from 
the  fact  that  it  symbolizes  the  unknown  and  mysterious. 
The  child  from  the  first  year  on  also  shows  the  rising 
sense  of  mystery  in  his  attitude  to  new  toys,  mechanical 
contrivances,  and  events  which  he  cannot  understand.1  He 
waits  to  test  the  new  toy  until  father  has  shown  him  that 
it  cannot  hurt  him.  He  exercises  his  curiosity  with  a  wise 
caution,  especially  when  his  attention  is  fixed  on  living 
things. 

The  child's  first  great  puzzle  of  a  general  kind  is  pos- 
sibly that  of  movement.  As  soon  as  he  gets  the  regu- 
larity of  the  mechanical  movements  of  the  external  objects 
of  his  environment  suitably  reduced  to  order  —  losing  his 
sense  of  mystery  in  respect  to  them,  out  of  sheer  famil- 
iarity with  them  —  his  sense  of  the  essential  strangeness 
of  the  movements  of  animate  beings  is  only  made  more 
emphatic,  in  contrast  with  the  lawfulness  and  easy  self- 
revelation  of  things.2  This  first  shows  itself  strongly  in 
his  experience  with  persons,  for  they  are  for  a  long  time 
the  only  animate  beings  with  which  he  has  anything  to 
do.  Persons  are  par  excellence  the  mysterious  things  to 
the  child,  and  in  his  early  years  he  strives  with  might 
and  main  to  understand  them. 

This  sense  is  also,  from  the  first,  associated  very  closely 


1  Young  children  often  show  fear  of  strange  or  unexplained  noises.  K. .  in 
her  third  half-year,  was  greatly  frightened  by  the  mechanical  '  moo-ing '  of  a 
toy  cow,  and  also  by  the  creaking  sounds  of  a  doll's  movable  legs. 

8  So  my  riding-horse  will  never,  it  seems,  lose  his  terror  at  the  sight  of  a 
slow-moving  canal-boat. 


Religious  Sentiment  349 

with  the  sense  of  dependence  which  we  have  already 
traced.  The  father  comes  to  the  boy's  rescue  and  saves 
him  from  pain ;  this  arouses  both  these  feelings  in  a 
complex  emotional  state.  He  is  made  more  dependent, 
in  his  own  thought,  by  his  father's  rescue  of  him  when 
he  himself  was  helpless;  and,  at  the  same  time,  he  is 
the  more  mystified  by  the  resources  of  his  father.  As 
he  understands  more,  and  reads  more  of  this  understand- 
ing into  those  about  him, — making  his  knowledge  ejec- 
tive,  —  he  also  grows  more  aware  of  their  complexity,  of 
his  essential  inability  to  anticipate  their  action ;  and  he 
becomes  more  and  more  sensible  of  the  profound  abyss 
of  the  'projective'  and 'prospective'  future-of-experience 
of  which  he  stands  in  ignorance. 

This  last  is  a  higher  sense  of  mystery.  The  intel- 
lectual elements  then  grow  prominent,  taking  on  the 
two  great  features  of  content  already  pointed  out  as 
characteristic  of  the  intellectual  categories  of  religion, 
those  of  cause  and  design.  The  child  busies  himself,  in 
the  second  or  intelligent  period,  with  the  what  and  the 
why  of  things  and  persons ;  understanding  the  things 
largely  in  terms  of  the  persons.  We  have  seen  that  his 
questioning  period  is  full  of  these  two  sorts  of  knowledge. 

And  when  we  come  to  ask  as  to  the  elements  of  con- 
tent which  these  two  types  of  question  represent,  we  see 
again  that  the  question  '  why '  is  both  later  and  more 
recondite.  As  soon  as  he  begins  to  think  much,  he 
begins  to  ask  the  '  why  '  even  of  the  things  and  events  of 
which  he  already  understands,  or  thinks  he  understands, 
the  what.  In  the  great  '  why '  period  of  the  child,  from 
the  third,  say,  to  the  sixth  year,  his  sense  of  mystery  is 
expressed  by  a  perfect  siege  of  the  citadel  of  the  parent's 


350  His  Sentiments 

personality  to  explain  the  commonest  occurrences  of  life. 
The  '  why-question '  is  not  only  the  instrument  of  intel- 
ligence that  we  have  found  above ;  it  is  also  a  perpetual 
index  of  the  child's  mystification. 

With  all  this  the  sense  of  mystery  tends  to  lose  some- 
what its  uninstructed  and  timorous  character,  and  to  take 
on  the  form  of  a  more  intelligent  reverence  for  personality. 
The  category  of  personality  becomes  in  itself,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  somewhat  familiar  resort  of  the  child  for  explain- 
ing both  the  '  what '  and  the  '  why  '  of  events,  and  with 
the  answer  which  leads  him  back  to  a  living  agency  he 
tends  to  rest  satisfied.  This  category  of  personality, 
therefore,  in  this  period,  seems  to  absorb  and  supersede 
both  the  other  two  categories  —  those  of  cause  and  design. 
The  child's  mysteries  in  the  universe  are  largely  pooled  in 
the  one  great  mystery  of  personality ;  and  this  in  turn 
ceases  to  be  the  simple  mystery  of  a  terrifying  outburst 
of  force,  or  a  blind  agency  of  wisdom  without  counsel ;  it 
becomes  the  sort  of  agency  of  which  the  child  himself 
seems  to  have  an  inkling  in  his  own  action. 

222.  It  is  natural  also,  for  other  reasons,  that  at  this 
period  of  growing  intelligence  the  child's  sense  of  the 
obscure  and  unknown  should  be  turned  mainly  toward 
persons.  It  is  then  that  he  is  most  evidently  becoming 
aware  of  the  social  influences,  such  as  those  of  the  family, 
the  school,  etc.,  which  lead  out  his  own  personality  in  its 
growth  through  imitation  and  social  absorption.  Social 
heredity  is  first  of  all  a  training  in  personal  appreciation 
of  self  and  others,  and  an  acquiring  of  social  independ- 
ence through  the  closest  sort  of  personal  dependence. 
Invention  and  independent  judgment  are  only  gradually 
achieved  ;  and  all  comes  through  the  mysterious  leading 


Religious  Sentiment  351 

of  others'  personality.  So  the  child  does  not  pool  his 
mysteries  of  his  own  choice,  nor  is  it  by  any  conscious 
process  of  his  own  that  it  is  done.  It  is  done  for  him  by 
the  very  conditions  of  his  growth  up  into  the  ready-made 
conditions  of  social  organization.  He  cannot  help  finding 
persons  the  interesting,  instructive,  difficult-to-understand 
objects ;  and  there  springs  up  in  him,  spontaneously  in 
the  first  place,  and  reflectively  in  the  second  place,  a  sense 
of  the  potencies  and  obscurities  of  personal  life,  which 
only  grows  more  profound  as  he  himself  grows  more 
intelligent  and  better  informed.1 

This  puzzle  of  persons  shows  itself  at  this  period  in 
certain  concrete  social  situations.  Having  found  a  sort  of 
solvent  of  his  intellectual  difficulties,  as  respects  the  what 
and  the  why,  in  the  ascribing  of  personal  agency  to  all 
mysterious  things  —  a  general  anthropomorphic  way  of 
reading  the  events  of  nature  —  he  finds  the  mystery  again 
in  the  singular  actions  of  personal  agents ;  in  their  treat- 
ment of  each  other  and  of  him.  Before  his  ethical  sense 
struggles  up  to  the  light,  the  ethical  situation  is  an  abso- 
lute puzzle  to  him.  His  understanding  of  the  actions  of 
persons  is,  in  the  main,  a  reference  of  them  to  one  of  two 
of  his  thoughts  of  self  —  what  have  been  called  the 
'  habitual '  self  and  the  '  accommodating '  self.  He  can 
understand  the  actions  of  others  which  are  frankly  selfish, 
and  also  those  which  are  frankly  generous ;  but  those 
which  do  not  go  clearly  into  either  of  these  two  categories 
now  excite  his  sense  of  mystery. 

This  mystery  tells  very  heavily  upon  the  child's  life, 

1  So  also  in  religious  systems,  the  profoundest  mysteries  are  those  arising 
about  the  construction  of  divine  personality,  such  as  incarnation,  human  and 
divine  natures  in  one,  the  trinity,  etc. 


352  His  Sentiments 

in  very  truth.  No  one  can  watch  a  four-year-old  in  the 
household  without  remarking  his  embarrassed  anxiety  in 
the  presence  of  the  ethical  controversies,  arrangements, 
arguments,  perhaps  disputes,  which  inevitably  arise  in  the 
family  circle  from  time  to  time.  The  elders  will  some- 
times come  through  an  earnest  conversation  on  good  or 
evil  only  to  find  the  forgotten  auditor  from  the  nursery  in 
tears  in  the  presence  of  the  mystery  of  their  conversation. 
Or  again,  the  little  fellow  will  appeal  to  you  to  help  the 
beggar,  and  show  his  mystification  that  you  do  not  follow 
out  the  generous  impulses  which  you  have  encouraged 
him  to  show  to  his  playmates.  The  little  girl  of  five  fails 
to  understand  why  the  visitor  should  be  allowed  to  take 
the  biggest  sugar-plum  in  the  dish  while  she  has  been 
forbidden  to  do  so.  This  is  the  beginning  of  a  standing 
mystery ;  a  mystery  of  all  life  which  we  never  really  un- 
ravel, although  we  get  to  reflect  on  it  more  maturely, 
and  to  introduce  consciously  a  higher  series  of  personal 
values  called  the  good  and  the  right.  But  to  the  child 
the  mysterious  elements  have  no  solvent,  and  he  can  only 
see  in  the  persons  who  act  in  these  complex  ways  beings 
to  revere,  depend  upon,  and  '  wonder '  at. 

So  in  the  light  of  all  that  has  been  said,  it  is  clear  that 
the  sense  of  religious  mystery  is,  almost  from  the  first, 
felt  in  and  about  personal  action  and  character ;  and  in 
the  period  of  growing  intelligence  it  becomes  an  intense 
straining  toward  the  revelation  of  personal  and  social  life 
which  goes  on  to  be  made  in  the  ethical  epoch  following.1 

223.  Coming,  then,  to  the  third  or  ethical  period  in  the 
child's  development,  the  feeling  of  mystery  is  seen,  like 

1  The  anthropological  or  racial  manifestations  of  this  early  mystery-feeling 
or  •  wonder '  have  been  given  full  description  by  writers  on  primitive  religion. 


Religious  Sentiment  353 

that  of  dependence,  to  take  on  its  highest  form.  Again 
here,  as  with  the  feeling  of  dependence,  we  might  inquire 
whether  real  religious  sentiment  has  been  present  before. 
And  we  can  only  answer  by  saying  that  lower  forms  of 
the  feeling  of  mystery  have  certainly  been  present  earlier ;. 
the  rest  is  a  matter  of  definition.  But  that  aside,  as  the 
ethical  sense  now  grows  up,  the  growing  sense  of  person- 
ality becomes  the  theatre  of  new  and  still  more  profound 
mysteries  to  the  child.  He  now  gets  within  himself  the 
new  thought  of  personality  called  the  ideal,  which  de- 
mands recognition  over  and  above  the  rival  selves  which 
have  hitherto  played  back  and  forth  in  his  mind. 

Here,  now,  the  call  to  conformity  to  a  set  of  examples 
which  are  essentially  mysterious,  is  no  longer  altogether 
outside  him ;  but  the  real  scene  of  its  rise  is  in  his  own 
breast.  The  ethical  and  the  social,  properly  so  called, 
are  distinguished  from  the  lower  emotional  states  in  just 
this,  that  they  contain  both  the  ego  and  the  alter  sense 
held  in  one  general  ideal  thought.  The  ethical  predicates, 
duty,  responsibility,  Tightness,  etc.,  come  up  about  the 
relationships  which  hold  between  the  partial  selves  on  the 
one  hand,  and  this  supreme  ideal  self  on  the  other.  Now, 
therefore,  when  the  child  comes  to  make  ejective  this 
highest  reach  of  his  personal  thought,  the  resulting  postu- 
late of  the  ethical  and  religious  nature  is  a  divine  being 
whose  perfections  call  out  the  more  refined  emotional 
attitudes  of  ethical  dependence  and  mystery.  All  these 
feelings  are  now  directed  toward  a  being  whose  nature 
is  essentially  ethical  and  social.  The  content  of  the  notion 
of  deity  in  the  child's  mind,  from  the  time  when  child- 
hood is  passing  into  youth,  is  an  ethical  and  social  content. 
Mystery  then  becomes  ethical  reverence  and  awe;  the 

2A 


354  H*s  Sentiments 

reverence  felt  by  that  great  philosopher  who  found  'the 
moral  law  within  me '  one  of  the  objects  of  his  most 
profound  meditation. 

This  period  is  so  pregnant  with  lessons  that  I  venture 
to  throw  them  into  certain  formal  statements  which  may 
stand  as  our  concluding  words  on  the  development  of  the 
religious  sense,  inasmuch  as  in  them  the  lessons  of  both 
the  phases  of  religious  experience  are  had  in  view. 

224.  First,  the  ethical  child —  and  man  too  —  must  tliink 
of  God  as  thinking  of  him ;    as  having  a  positive  ethical 
attitude  toward  him.     His  own  mysterious  but  imperative 
self-judgment  can   only  be   clear  when  the  child   thinks 
also  of   the  other  person  as  sharing   his   own    self-com- 
mendation or  self-condemnation.     The  element  of  social 
publicity  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  real  part  of  the  content 
on  the  basis  of  which  the  ethical  emotions  go  forth.     So, 
in   the   process   which   follows   in   his    ejective    religious 
life,   he   must  think   'Thou   God   seest   me,'   just  as   he 
thinks  in  his  daily  life   '  father  and  mother  are  judging 
me.' 

225.  Second,  in  this  highest  stretch,  therefore,  of  the 
religious  life  into  which  the  child  is  now  entering,  God  is 
a  real  person,  standing  in  real  relations  of  ethical  approval 
and  disapproval — says  the  religious  sense  —  of  me  ivJio 
worship  him.     My  worship   is  a  recognition  not  mainly 
of  his  existence,  —  that  cannot  even  be  a  question  in  the 
spontaneous   religious    development   of    consciousness,— 
but   of    his    excellence.      The    divine    person    is,    in    the 
religious  life,  very  much  the  same  sort  of  a  postulate  that 
the  social  fellow  is  in  the  ethical  life,  and  that  the  world 
of  external  and  personal  relationships  is  in  the  intellectual 
life. 


Religious  Sentiment  355 

226.  Third,  yet  in  the  interpretation  of  this  postulate, 
in  the  attempt  to  pass  from  the  stage  of  sentiment  into 
that  of  dogma  —  the  attempt  which  is  a  necessary  mental 
movement,  and  which  even  the  child  makes  —  the  intelli- 
gence is  baffled  both  by  tlie  limitations  of  its  own  grozvth, 
and  by  the  very   ' projective '  and  'prospective  '   nature  of 
the  movement  upon  which  the  religious  sense  rests.     With- 
out the  mysteries,  religion  would  be  knowledge  to  be  re- 
cited—  the  individual's  mind  would  be  the  only  thing  in 
the  universe  to  reverence  —  which  is  to  say  that  the  ideal 
would  be  no  longer  an  ideal,  but  a  fact  of  experience.     The 
child  shows  this  in  his  very  temporary  satisfaction  with 
the   personal   embodiments  of   his  reverence.      He  must 
pass  on  to  the  stage  in  which  the  real  thing  about  char- 
acter is  just  the  general  or  ideal  thing  which  no  single 
character   completely  shows.     When   he   comes   to   eject 
this  ideal,  we  see  him  struggling  with  the  essential  con- 
tradiction which  this  involves  from  an  intellectual  point 
of  view  —  the  attempt,  i.e.,  to  think  a  particular  individual 
who  yet  has  not  the  limitations  which  it  is  essential  to 
his   knowledge   of    individuality   that   they    should    have. 
Omnipotence,  omniscience,  spiritual  presence  with  no  local 
body,  social  wisdom,  ethical  perfection,  all  sorts  of  infini- 
tude,—  these  attributes  trouble  him;    and  it  is  just  the 
need  of  thinking  them  to  which  he  is  driven,  at  the  same 
time  that  he  cannot  find  categories  of  imitative  or  experi- 
mental knowledge  for  thinking  them,  which  plunges  him 
into  the  most  profound  sense  of  mystery,  and  initiates  him 
into  his  most  stirring  religious  experiences. 

227.  Fourth,  the   essential  mysticism   of  the    religions 
consciousness  lives  to  the  last.     It  takes  on  certain  semi- 
differentiated  forms  for  which  we  have  words  of  more  or 


356  His  Sentiments 

less  adequate  import.  We  have  seen  that  the  sense  of 
dependence  throws  the  child  into  certain  emotional  states 
which  go  by  different  names ;  it  is  only  a  proof  of  the 
oneness  of  religious  sentiment,  and  of  the  oneness  withal 
of  the  intellectual  and  personal  growth  which  reaches  its 
highest  fruitage  in  it,  that  the  sense  of  mystery  shows 
itself  everywhere  in  similar  attitudes.  Here  we  find  rever- 
ence, which  is  none  the  less  a  sense  of  mystery  because  the 
Mysterious  is  at  the  same  time  that  which  we  trust :  awe 
whose  object  is  none  the  less  good  and  trustworthy  because 
it  is  awfully  mysterious ;  fear,  which  is  none  the  less  whole- 
some because  it  leads  to  deeds  of  submission,  of  propitia- 
tion, of  confession,  and  of  faith. 

228.  This  brief  survey  of  the  elements  involved  in  the 
development  of  the  religious  consciousness  may  be  brought 
to  a  close  by  a  word  as  to  the  real  matter  of  which  reli- 
gion, as  an  institution,  takes  cognizance.  Looking  broadly 
at  the  result  of  our  thought  on  the  subject,  we  may  gather 
up  our  view  in  the  general  position  that  the  religious  senti- 
ment is  everywhere  dependent  upon  the  personal  growth 
of  the  individual  as  a  whole  —  his  intelligence,  his  conduct, 
his  emotion.  The  growth  of  his  intellectual  constructions 
of  personal  reality  gives  him  a  basis  for  anticipating  moral 
and  social  events,  and  for  endeavouring,  by  what  we  may 
call  an  act  of  faith  —  the  outreach  seen  in  all  the  prospec- 
tive references  of  his  growth,  toward  the  newer  event  of 
that  on  which  he  depends,  and  the  newer  manifestation  of 
that  of  which  he  stands  in  awe,  —  to  put  himself  in  har- 
mony with  the  general  and  ideal  personal  realities  of  the 
universe.  His  striving  shows  itself  in  the  institutions  of 
religion  ;  and  his  justification  of  it  is  his  faith.  So  instead 
of  the  formula  of  Matthew  Arnold  :  '  Religion  is  morality 


Religious  Sentiment  357 

touched  with  emotion,'  I  should  prefer  to  say,  from  the 
study  of  the  psychology  of  development :  Religion  is  emo- 
tion kindled  by  faith,  emotion  being  reverence  for  a  Person 
and  faith  being  dependence  upon  Him. 

So  the  child  who  gropes  for  his  father,  the  savage  who 
bows  before  his  stock,  the  ecclesiastic  who  enforces  a 
dogma,  the  pietist  who  lives  on  herbs,  —  all  these,  as 
well  as  the  mystic  who  contemplates  the  unseen,  and  the 
rationalist  who  still  believes  something  that  he  does  not 
see,  all  of  them  are  religious ! 

229.  The  place  of  religion  in  social  development  is,  in 
view  of  its  dependence  upon  the  growth  of  self  at  all  its 
stages,  that  of  emotion  of  the  social  sort.  It  becomes 
most  important  in  its  alliance  with  the  ethical  life  in  the 
higher  reaches  of  human  development.  This  is  discussed 
further  under  the  head  of  the  '  Ethical  and  Religious 
Sanctions,'  below  (Chap.  X.,  §  4). 


PART  IV 
THE  PERSON'S  SANCTIONS1 

CHAPTER   IX 
His  PERSONAL  SANCTIONS 

230.  We  have  now  attempted  to  trace  the  development 
of  the  social  individual  in  such  a  way  as  to  get  a  tolerably 
complete  idea  of  his  equipment  at  each  of  the  critical 
epochs  of  his  life ;  our  inquiry  has  also,  in  some  degree, 
indicated  the  character  of  the  social  environment  in  which 
he  disports  himself.  Coming  to  look  a  little  more  objec- 
tively at  his  actions  in  society,  we  see  that  another  very 
important  question  arises  for  consideration. 

This  question  has  to  do  with  the  individual  mainly,  and 
concerns  the  disposition  he  shows  to  accept  the  conditions 
of  social  life,  and  live  his  life  as  a  citizen  good  or  bad. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  find  that  he  usually  accepts 
things  as  they  exist.  Philosophers  have  attempted  to 
argue  that  he  should  not ;  that  his  life  is  not  worth  his 
while;  that  he  has  his  fate  in  his  own  hands;  and  that 
it  is  at  least  an  open  question  to  each,  as  he  grows  to 
maturity  and  gets  an  intelligent  view  of  the  human  tur- 
moil called  life,  whether  he  will  enter  the  lists  or  volun- 

1  On  the  general  topic  of  '  Sanction,'  considered  in  its  social  bearings,  the 
reader  should  consult  Stephen  on  '  Theory  of  Social  Motives,'  Science  of  Klhi(t, 
Chap.  III. 

358 


His  Personal  Sanctions  359 

tarily  withdraw.  Yet,  as  I  have  said,  men  do  not 
generally  withdraw,  although  the  means  of  self-destruc- 
tion lie  ready  at  hand.  This  is  the  fact,  and  there  must 
be  reasons  for  the  fact ;  reasons  which  in  some  way 
actuate  the  man  himself  in  maintaining  his  life  and  social 
place.  Moreover,  we  may  see,  by  a  little  more  reflection, 
that  these  reasons  are  of  two  general  classes  according  as 
we  take  the  point  of  view  of  the  single  man,  or  of  society 
as  a  whole.  If  we  call  all  the  reasons  which  are  really 
operative  on  the  individual,  in  keeping  him  at  work  and 
at  play  in  the  varied  drama  of  life,  his  'sanctions,'  then 
there  seem  to  be  two  great  classes  of  such  sanctions. 

(1)  We  may  try  to  find  the  reasons  which  a  man  sets 
before  himself,  the  conscious  objects  which  he  sets  up  for 
pursuit,  the  ends  of  life  as  he  is  accustomed  to  pursue 
them,  his   own   sanctions  for   the   activities  in  which   he 
engages.     Let  us  for  the  purposes  of  discussion  call  these 
his   'personal  sanctions,'  and  ask:  what  are  the  personal 
sanctions  f 

(2)  The  other  class  of   influences  which   bear  on  the 
individual  man,  to  keep  him  in  line  with  the  requirements 
of  life,  are  those  of  a  social  kind  which  he  does  not  him- 
self take  into  account  consciously  nor  attempt  to  reckon 
with.     They  are   the   agencies  which  in  a  measure  —  at 
least  we  may  say  so  at  the  start  for  the  purposes  of  dis- 
tinction—  lie  outside   his  own  thought  and  control,  but 
which   he   actually  recognizes   simply  because   they   are 
there.      Such,  for  example,  is  the  civil  law.     These  in- 
fluences we  may  call  '  social  sanctions,'    and   ask :  what 
are  the  social  sanctions  ? 

Besides  these  two  great  topics,  there  is  then  the  third 
and  most  important  of  all,  in  the  sequel ;  the  topic  as  to 


360  His  Personal  Sanctions 

how  these  two  sorts  of  sanctions  are  related  to  each  other, 
and  how  the  man  comes  to  act  as  he  does  under  the 
influence  of  the  two  together.  In  this  chapter  we  shall 
consider  the  Personal  Sanctions. 

231.  We  have  now  grown  sufficiently  familiar  with  the 
general  method  of  development  in  the  mental  life  to  lead 
us  to  think  that  the  notion  of  sanction,  in  order  to  have 
general  application,  must  be  wide  enough  to  describe, 
from  its  own  point  of  view,  each  of  the  great  epochs  of 
mental  evolution  in  the  individual.  The  child  at  six,  no 
less  than  the  youth  at  sixteen  and  the  man  at  sixty,  must 
have  sanctions  for  his  acts.  There  must  be  a  develop- 
ment in  the  idea  of  sanction  —  if  it  is  to  be  a  real  thing 
—  as  there  is  in  the  mental  life  to  which  it  applies.  The 
neglect  of  this  distinction  seems  to  have  been  the  source  of 
many  fallacies  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  Hobbes  and 
Comte,  on  one  side  of  political  theory,  and  those  of  Thomas 
Hill  Green,  on  the  other.  The  tendency  has  been  to  limit 
the  concept  of  sanction  to  the  meaning  which  it  has  in  the 
higher  reflective  life  :  either  to  rational  motives  in  the  indi- 
vidual, or  to  formulated  statutes  and  penalties  in  social  life. 

Thus  many  writers  have  been  accustomed  to  understand 
by  a  man's  sanction  his  own  conscious  justification,  the 
reasons  which  he  himself  has  in  mind,  in  a  more  or  less 
clearly  formulated  way,  for  having  an  end,  rather  than  the 
mere  having  of  the  end,  considered  as  its  own  sanction. 

The  difficulty  with  such  a  form  of  thought  is  that  it 
draws  artificial  limits  by  constraint  of  narrow  definition. 
The  theory  of  political  life  has  suffered  from  this,  much 
as  the  theory  of  ethics  has  suffered  from  a  narrow  reflec- 
tive definition  of  the  word  '  motive.'  In  the  discussion  of 
ends,  above,  we  have  seen  how  the  conception  of  the  mind. 


His  Personal  Sanctions  361 

as  a  developing  thing  which  never  loses  its  connection 
with  the  vitality  of  the  physical  organism,  leads  us  to  the 
further  thought  that  mental  growth  never  proceeds  per 
saltum.  The  broader  and  more  generic  we  are  able  to 
make  all  the  concepts  of  mental  life,  the  more  adequate 
and  unembarrassing  will  they  be.  The  biologist  has  long 
since  learned  the  necessity  of  this  in  dealing  with  prob- 
lems of  evolution.  Claiming  the  right  to  do  so  in  this 
case,  —  and  leaving  to  the  result  to  justify  the  use  of  the 
term  given  below,  —  we  may  go  on  to  show  the  actual  in- 
fluences which  work  as  sanctions  in  the  individual's  mind 
at  his  successive  stages  of  development.  The  conclusion 
will  show  better,  perhaps,  than  words  could  at  this  stage 
of  our  progress,  that  the  individual's  formulation  of  the 
reasons  for  his  action  are  in  no  sense  always  the  same  as 
the  actual  reasons ;  and  that  the  very  distinction  between 
his  ability  and  his  inability  to  formulate  his  reasons  is  in 
itself  a  vital  distinction  in  his  personal  and  social  growth. 
In  other  words,  the  matter  is  not  one  of  definition  only ; 
but  one  of  material  content.  The  following  pages,  there- 
fore, will  use  the  term  in  this  sense :  a  sanction  is  any 
ground  or  reason  which  is  adequate  to  initiate  action, 
whether  the  actor  be  conscious  or  not  that  tJiis  is  the  ground 
or  reason  of  the  resulting  action.  For  example,  the  senseless 
outcry  of  the  lunatic  has  its  sanction  in  the  disordered 
condition  of  his  faculties,  although  he  think  himself  sane ; 
and  the  voluntary  calculation  of  the  burglar  has  its  sanc- 
tion in  the  reward  which  he  sets  before  himself.  These 
two  cases  are  given,  from  the  opposite  ends  of  the  scale, 
to  illustrate  the  limits  of  the  term  as  I  am  going  on  to 
use  it. 

232.    When  we  come  with  so  much  of  introduction  to 


362  His  Personal  Sanctions 

cast  a  wide  glance  over  the  details  of  mental  development, 
certain  milestones,  which  we  have  now  grown  accustomed 
to  look  for,  show  out  white  and  make  the  course  before . 
us  less  difficult.  We  have  already  had  much  evidence, 
both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  for  the  position  that  at 
least  three  great  epochs  of  human  life  unroll  themselves 
in  order  in  each  growing  child ;  I  have  called  them  the 
spontaneous,  the  intelligent,  and  the  ideal  or  ethical 
epochs.1  This  way  of  looking  at  the  epochs  of  personal 
growth,  it  will  be  remembered,  arose  not  from  conven- 
ience, much  less  from  theory,  but  from  the  actual  stretches 
or  levels  of  mental  attainment  on  the  part  of  the  child, 
which  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  so  clearly  distinguished  that 
it  is  impossible  to  overlook  them. 

To  illustrate,  in  the  matter  of  sanction,  we  may  cite 
three  actions :  the  two-year-old's  (or  the  dog's)  cry  for 
food,  the  five-year-old's  run  to  avoid  the  punishment  due 
to  his  lie,  and  the  nun's  act  of  attachment  to  the  consola- 
tions of  religion.  I  do  not  mean  that  these  typical  men- 
tal states  are  on  the  surface  different-looking  merely,  nor 
that  their  differences  might  not  be  differently  construed 
by  different  competent  judges ;  but  what  I  mean  to  say 
is  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  development,  the  actor 
of  the  first  could  not  with  reason  —  with  any  sanction  then 
present  in  him  —  perform  the  second  action,  nor  the  sec- 
ond actor,  the  third  action.  All  the  reasons  for  the  dif- 
ferences need  not  be  exhausted ;  but  the  real  one  which 
includes  the  rest  has  been  found,  I  think,  in  the  progress 
of  the  actor  in  the  thought  of  his  own  personal  self. 

1  In  considering  the  emotions,  we  found  an  earlier  '  instinctive '  period,  and 
then  spoke  of  the  intelligent  and  ethical  together.  We  here  have  no  need  to 
separate  the  so-called  '  instinctive '  and  '  spontaneous  '  periods. 


The  Sanction  of  Impulse  363 

So  assuming  the  former  characterizations  as  in  a  meas- 
ure, .at  least  true,  we  should  expect  to  find  three  great 
classes  of  reasons  for  action  in  these  periods  respectively, 
three  .great  personal  sanctions  for  conduct ;  they  may  be 
called  by  analogy  with  the  epochs  in  which  they  arise, 
respectively,  the  Sanction  of  Impulse,  the  Sanction  of 
Desire \  and  the  Sanction  of  Right. 

§  i.    The  Sanction  of  Impulse 

233.  It  is  not  necessary  that  we  should  stop  long  upon 
this  lowest  of  all  the  categories  of  human  action ;  espe- 
cially as  it  is  not  realized  in  its  purity  outside  of  the 
nursery  and  the  reform  or  criminal  institution.  In  the 
child  we  find  impulse  at  its  best.  It  is  there  not  compli- 
cated by  the  wreck  of  higher  faculties,  as  in  the  insane ; 
nor  by  interference  from  them  as  in  the  sane  of  an  older 
growth ;  nor  is  it  restrained  by  the  agencies  which  give 
society  its  influence  at  a  later  period.  We  are  amused 
at  the  child's  innocent  impulses,  put  a  screen  about  him 
to  keep  him  from  toying  with  the  hurtful,  and  give  him 
the  privileges  due  to  his  extreme  youth.  This  very  toler- 
ation of  impulse,  where  it  is  all  the  endowment  to  be  seen 
in  the  creature  which  shows  it,  is  in  itself  a  sufficient  war- 
rant for  the  owner's  own  confidence  in  his  sanction.  The 
natural  and  the  normal  is  its  own  sanction,  we  say,  in 
effect ;  and  in  so  far  as  this  is  not  true,  we  let  it  show 
its  own  incompetence.  It  is  thus  we  tolerate  the  beasts 
about  us.  We  do  not  seek  to  lead  them  out  of  what  we 
might  think  to  be  a  very  inferior  and  imperfect  realization 
of  the  possibilities  of  life.  The  defective  classes  and  the 
lunatics  of  the  types  whose  impulses  are  magnified  in 


364  His  Personal  Sanctions 

dangerous  directions,  we  shut  up,  it  is  true,  yet  not  for 
their  sakes,  but  for  our  own.  But  if  we  were  all  at  their 
level,  if  we  were  all  children  of  the  same  age,  or  animals 
of  the  same  flock,  or  lunatics  of  the  same  lack,  even  this 
limitation  upon  impulse  would  be  impossible. 

Yet  when  we  come  to  ask  for  the  reason  that  such 
impulsive  action,  when  uncomplicated  by  higher  pro- 
cesses, seems  to  carry  its  own  sanction,  we  see  that  it 
is  still  incumbent  upon  us  to  seek  it  out.  In  this  case 
it  reduces  itself  very  largely  to  the  biological  and  psycho- 
logical question  as  to  the  terminus  ad  quern  of  the  impulse. 
Even  the  blindest,  most  unpremeditated,  action  has  a  mean- 
ing in  the  scheme  of  life  which  has  some  vague  representa- 
tion in  the  creature's  consciousness  ;  how  rich  a  meaning  it 
may  become  and  still  be  blind  is  seen  in  the  creations  of  the 
instinct  of  certain  insects.  So  the  question  as  to  the  sanc- 
tion here  may  carry  with  it  also  that  of  the  life-function 
of  the  actions  of  which  the  question  is  asked.  And  it  is 
the  more  important,  since,  as  we  shall  see  below,  this  low- 
est sanction,  which  expresses  simply  the  general  teleology 
of  the  life-processes  as  a  whole,  never  in  all  the  higher  de- 
velopments gets  entirely  vacated  of  its  force.  It  is  largely 
replaced,  modified,  inhibited,  and  much  hidden-  in  the 
child's  later  life  when  volition,  thought,  sentiment,  come 
in  to  enrich  it;  but  the  man  never  ceases  to  be,  with  it 
all,  in  some  degree,  a  creature  of  impulse  acting  with  the 
biological  machinery  which  he  has  in  common  with  the 
babe  and  the  beast. 

Coming  to  inquire,  accordingly,  into  the  meaning  and 
reason  of  the  impulses  of  the  child  in  this  earliest  stage, 
we  are  able  to  invoke  a  recent  formulation  of  psychology 
which  puts  the  case  in  general  terms.  It  is  now  a  widely 


The  Sanction  of  Impulse  365 

accepted  doctrine  that  all  motor  activities  have  risen  through 
adaptation  to  environment ;  that  is,  as  affording  appropri- 
ate response  to  stimulation.     The  fixing  of  motor  processes 
in  the  individual  is  through  repetition  or  its  equivalent; 
and  this   repetition   is   secured  by  the  tendencies  of   the 
organism  to  acquire  habits  of  keeping  up  actions  which 
have  proved  themselves  vitally  beneficial.     .The  species, 
we  may  assume,  perpetuates  such  actions  through  natural 
selection.     It  follows  that  we  may  at  once  make  the  gen- 
eral statement  that  any  form  of  action  which  a  creature 
habitually  shows  must  be  directed  toward  a  more  or  less 
definite  class  of  sensory  conditions  or  stimulations  which  the 
environment  furnishes,  as  a  suitable  terminus  of  the  acts  in 
question.      Generalizing  this,  we  may  say  that  the  mean- 
ing and  value  of    the  particular   action  is  found  in  the 
stimulus  which  it  aims  to  reach  and  secure.    The  sanction, 
then,  if  we  care  to  call  it  such,  at  this  early  stage  of  devel- 
opment, is  found  in  the  objective  conditions  under  which 
the  action  of  the  organism  comes  into  operation ;  and  this 
for  two  reasons.     First,  it  is  by  adaptation  to  these  con- 
ditions that  any  particular  action  has  come  to  be  what 
it  is,  and  to  differentiate  itself  from  other  actions ;  and  it 
is  only  by  such  a  differentiation,  and  on  the  ground  of  it, 
that  we  can  ask  the  question  of  sanction  of  the  particu- 
lar reaction  at  all.     And    second,  the  future  adaptation, 
progress,  and  very  life  indeed  of  the  organism  rests  upon 
the  continuance  of  the  stimulations  which  its  reaction  alone 
serves  to  secure.     There  seems  to  be,  therefore,  both  a  ret- 
rospective and  a  prospective  reasonableness,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  thought  that  the  biological  sanction  of  the  reaction 
is  the  beneficial  experience  which  the  reaction  serves  to 
absorb,  continue,  and  render  permanently  available. 


366  His  Personal  Sanctions 

But  this  is  evidently  not  in  the  mind  of  the  organism,  or 
of  the  child  himself.  Whether  we  ask  why  he  reacts  or 
\Yhy  he  thinks,  still  his  mind  is  not  filled  up  with  the  bio- 
logical or  psychological  value  of  his  act.  At  the  lowest 
stage — the  purely  impulsive  —  when  the  question  is  one 
simply  as  to  what  antecedents  in  the  child's  own  mind 
issue  in  this  action  or  that,  his  mind  is  thoroughly  objec- 
tive. The  object  before  him  fills  up  his  consciousness ;  he 
thinks  nothing  about  it,  he  simply  thinks  it.  His  action 
goes  out  in  the  channels  of  inherited  tendency,  directly 
upon  the  object.  So  in  it  we  have  the  justification  of  his 
conduct.  Everything  is  so  simple  in  his  mind  that  it  is 
impossible  to  make  a  complex  thing  out  of  it.  He  acts 
because  it  is  his  nature  to  —  that  is  his  only  and  adequate 
reason.  He  himself,  when  we  ask  him  why  he  acted  so 
and  so,  says  :  '  I  don't  know,'  or '  I  couldn't  help  it.'  And 
we  say  the  same  of  it  when  we  behold  the  child  or  an 
adult  of  weak  mind  or  overpowering  impulse. 

234.  These  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  matter  may  be 
distinguished  with  some  emphasis  for  reasons  of  clearness 
in  the  subsequent  epochs  of  growth,  when  they  become  of 
some  importance.  Let  us  call  the  former  —  the  biological 
or  psychological  reasons  for  action  which  we  are  able  to 
find  out,  from  our  theory  of  development,  but  of  which  the 
child  himself  is  finely  ignorant  —  the  objective  sanction ; 
and  then  we  may  go  on  to  call  the  reasons  which  the 
agent  himself  sets  before  him  for  his  action  the  subjective 
sanction.  This  is  a  distinction  which  ethical  writers  have 
to  maintain  in  their  doctrine  of  ends;  a  doctrine  with 
which  our  present  topic  has  much  in  common.  We  then 
may  say,  in  view  of  the  suggestions  made  above  on  the 
condition  of  things  in  the  impulsive  epoch,  that  the  sane- 


The  Sanction  of  Impulse  367 

tion  in  this  epoch  is  of  two  sorts:  the  objective  sanction, 
which  is  the  sanction  of  fact  or  of  theory ;  and  the  sub- 
jective sanction,  which  is  the  sanction  of  necessity.  The 
sanction  of  fact  or  theory  in  the  case  of  all  biological  prod- 
ucts is,  in  the  current  state  of  biological  opinion,  what  is 
sometimes  called  the  sanction  of  fitness,  or  the  sanction 
of  survival)-  The  sanction  of  necessity,  on  the  other  hand, 
is,  like  the  other,  equally  ultimate  from  the  psychological 
point  of  view,  since  it  represents  the  final  psychological 
fact  —  the  initial  form  of  activity  which  we  find  accom- 
panied by  consciousness. 

We  may  say,  therefore,  after  these  explanations,  that 
we  have  here  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  conditions  of 
the  problem.  Both  are  at  their  simplest  in  this  stage  of 
mental  development.  And  we  may  give  them  simple  com- 
mon-sense terms  throughout  the  discussions  which  follow ; 
i.e.,  let  us  call  the  psychological  sanction  which  is  ordi- 
narily described  very  justly  under  the  term  necessity,  as 
the  'sanction  of  impulse.'  Such  usage  will  carry  its  own 
meaning,  and  be  readily  understood  by  psychologists. 
The  other  sort  of  sanction  may  best  be  described,  apart 
from  biological  and  philosophical  theory,  as  the  '  sanction 
of  fact.' 

In  tracing  the  development  of  the  '  personal '  sanction, 
—  as  we  have  called  the  individual's  reasons  for  action, 
as  contrasted  with  those  which  arise  from  social  organiza- 
tion, —  we  will  have  little  to  do  with  the  '  sanction  of  fact ' 
as  such ;  the  further  development  of  the  person's  private 

1  It  is  evident  that  '  fitness '  would  apply  both  to  the  individual's  functions 
and  to  the  racial  qualities  which  survive;  and  if  we  agree  that  the  individual's 
actions  are  also  selected  by  '  functional  selection  '  from  over-produced  move- 
ments, the  test  of  '  survival '  would  also  apply  to  them.  Cf.  my  Mental  De- 
velopment, pp.  1 74  ff. 


368  His  Personal  Sanctions 

mental  life  is  mainly  an  evolution  proceeding  out  from  the 
'  sanction  of  impulse.' 


§  2.    The  Lower  Hedonic  Sanction 

235.  Even  in  the  impulsive  life  the  great  facts  of  pleas- 
ure and  pain  encounter  us ;  facts  which  no  theory  of  the 
active  life  can  ignore.  However  we  may  be  disposed 
to  argue  about  the  place  of  these  facts  in  psychological 
theory,  we  may  for  our  present  purpose — taking  advan- 
tage of  the  distinction  just  made — look  simply  at  these 
states  as  elements  of  consciousness  which  come  in  to  influ- 
ence action.  And  throwing  the  two,  pleasure  and  pain, 
together  under  the  phrase  '  hedonic  consciousness,'  we 
may  say  that  the  first  departure  from  the  simple  sanction 
of  impulse  which  we  are  able  to  observe  in  the  child  is 
toward  what  may  be  called  the  '  hedonic  sanction.'  The 
child  begins  very  early  to  act  with  reference  to  the  hedonic 
quality  of  his  experience.  He  no  longer  takes  impulse  at 
its  face  value,  and  all  impulses  at  equal  value.  His  experi- 
ence is  wonderfully  coloured  by  pain  and  wonderfully  illu- 
mined by  pleasure.  Quick  associations  are  formed  between 
acts  and  their  consequences  for  the  mental  life ;  and  where 
association  is  too  long  a  process  to  wait  for,  certain  ap- 
pearances suggestive  of  pain  or  pleasure  are  sufficient  to 
warn,  counsel,  and  instruct  him.  All  this  is  a  matter  of 
such  general  recognition  as  fact  —  apart  from  the  theories 
by  which  it  may  be  explained  —  that  we  may  simply  state 
it  without  fear  of  dispute. 

The  direct  result  of  this  injection  of  the  hedonic  element 
into  experience  is  the  modification  of  impulse,  not  only  as 
regards  the  purity  of  its  issue  in  action,  but  as  regards  the 


The  Lower  Hedonic  Sanction  369 

form  of  the  impulse  itself.  The  hedonic  ingredient  does 
not  follow  upon  action  simply  as  its  result;  it  is,  by  the 
quick  associative  and  suggestive  processes  spoken  of, 
welded  upon  the  stimulations  to  which  the  organism  is 
called  upon  to  react.  The  stimulus  arising  from  an  object 
becomes  the  stimulation  of  a  pleasurable  or  painful  object. 
And  the  reaction  which  follows  upon  it  now  represents 
not  the  attitude  to  the  object  per  se,  taken  alone,  but  to 
the  whole  source  of  stimulation,  including  the  hedonic 
quality  which  the  object  has  acquired.  So  the  object 
serving  as  terminus  for  reaction  is  now  different  ;  the 
child  is  now  sharply  conscious  of  the  pleasure  or  pain 
aspect  of  the  things  with  which  he  deals,  more  conscious 
in  some  cases  of  this  aspect  than  of  the  mere  cognition  or 
presentative  elements  which  before  appealed  to  him  for 
recognition. 

As  a  result  of  this  we  find  a  very  marked  and  subtle 
sense  growing  up  in  his  mind ;  a  sense  of  the  worth  of  the 
things  and  events  of  life  in  terms  of  their  hedonic  aspect. 
It  is  an  advance  upon  the  simple  impulsive  consciousness 
which  we  have  described  —  more  or  less  artificially,  it  is 
true  —  in  the  earlier  pages.  And  to  this  we  have  to  give 
recognition  in  our  progress  toward  a  further  statement  of 
his  personal  sanctions. 

236.  This  early  effect  of  pleasure  and  pain  must  not  be 
confused,  however,  with  what  is  ordinarily  called  love  of 
pleasure  and  fear  of  pain  ;  that  is  more  complex  and 
comes  later.  At  the  stage  of  which  we  now  speak,  the 
influence  of  pleasure  or  pain  is  not  an  influence  distinct 
from  that  of  the  object  upon  which  the  child  acts.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  a  part,  an  aspect,  of  that  object.  In 
any  case  of  urgency,  the  situation  as  a  whole  it  is  which 

2B 


37O  His  Personal  Sanctions 

appeals  to  the  child  for  action.  He  does  not  weigh  the 
object  over  against  the  pain  and  choose  between  them. 
He  takes  an  attitude  appropriate  to  the  situation  as  a 
whole.  And  even  in  the  case  in  which  the  pain  prospect 
does  seem  to  stand  out  in  opposition  to  the  remaining  ele- 
ments of  the  stimulating  situation,  and  draw  him  in  a  con- 
trary direction,  even  then  he  does  not  picture  to  himself 
the  pain  as  such,  as  a  reason  for  acting  or  refraining  from 
action;  even  here  his  hesitation  is  due,  I  think,  to  the  fact 
that  a  new  object  with  a  different  hedonic  colouring  comes 
to  oppose  an  old  one ;  and  he  has  a  conflict  of  impulses  of 
which  one  is  more  especially  identified  with  the  highly 
coloured  hedonic  cause  or  event.  The  cases  in  which 
pleasure  is  intelligently  pursued  and  pain  avoided  come 
under  the  later  sanction  of  desire. 

237.  I  think,  therefore,  that  we  may  safely  say  that  the 
individual  finds  himself  sometimes  in  a  position  in  which 
the  sanction  of  impulse  is  complicated  by  a  further  hedonic 
sanction.  And  the  effect  of  this  is  that  there  is  instituted 
an  inhibition  upon  the  purely  impulsive  action.  The  he- 
donic sanction  comes  in  to  replace  and  annul  the  sanction 
of  impulse.  The  child  reaches  for  the  fire  by  impulse ; 
that  alone,  apart  from  experience,  is  sufficient  sanction  for 
the  act;  but  the  pain  that  follows  comes,  on  the  next 
occasion,  to  be  a  part  of  the  very  stimulation  which  the 
fire  as  a  situation  presents ;  and  now  the  newer  sanction 
of  pain  comes  in  to  inhibit  the  reaching  movement.  So 
it  is  throughout  all  the  life  of  pleasure  and  pain.  It  may 
suffice  to  remark  that  this  much  is  sufficient  for  the  theory 
of  sanction  at  this  stage,  far  as  it  may  yet  be  from  an 
adequate  statement  of  a  theory  of  pleasure  and  pain 
reactions.  The  question  as  to  how  far  the  reaction  to 


The  Lower  Hedonic  Sanction  371 

pleasure  or  pain  is  itself  impulsive,  is  of  course  an  open 
one,  and  a  theory  from  the  psychological  point  of  view 
should  answer  it.  Here  it  is  just  our  object  to  avoid  these 
psychological  questions  and  to  aim  only  at  putting  plainly 
out  the  actual  stages  through  which  the  child  goes  in  his 
development  toward  a  full  consciousness  of  the  grounds 
of  his  conduct. 

This  so-called  '  hedonic  sanction '  is  not  confined  to  the 
life  of  the  young  child.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  very 
gross  and  prominent  feature  of  our  common  unreflective 
life.  We  say  to  the  man  who  is  wild  with  toothache  that 
he  may  be  excused  from  the  amenities  of  polite  social 
intercourse ;  his  pain  sanctions  any  amount  of  brutality 
to  the  unfortunate  who  comes  in  his  way.  We  excuse 
the  man  to  whom  a  fortune  has  been  left  if  his  feelings 
are  expressed  in  a  way  which  annoys  his  neighbours.  The 
banging  of  crackers  and  noise  of  rioting  is  excused  on 
occasions  of  patriotic  demonstration  —  high  feeling  is  their 
sanction.  And  some  of  the  subtler  processes  of  sympathy 
and  tacit  justification,  in  society  —  such,  for  example,  as 
the  sending  of  flowers  to  condemned  criminals,  the  hero- 
worship  of  the  successful  gambler,  etc.  —  seem  to  reflect 
the  sense  in  some  that  a  desperate  or  a  brilliant  hedonic 
situation  is  in  some  degree  its  own  sanction.  This  is  true 
to  the  greater  extent,  according  as  we  are  able,  at  the 
same  time,  to  reduce  the  situation,  as  it  takes  shape  in 
the  actor's  mind,  to  a  form  which  excludes  from  his  cog- 
nizance ail  more  intellectual  and  sentimental  elements. 
It  is  very  difficult  to  punish  the  boy  who  commits  an  act 
of  daring  crime,  after  the  examples  of  criminal  literature ; 
for  we  feel  that  the  highest  elements  of  the  boy's  nature, 
then  so  immature,  really  united  in  the  general  hedonic 


372  His  Personal  Sanctions 

situation  which  success  presented  to  him.  While  on  the 
pathological  side  the  expression  'crazed  with  grief  or 
terror'  really  shows  that  suffering  or  joy  may  sanction 
almost  any  conduct,  by  breaking  down  for  the  moment  the 
higher  barriers  which  intelligence  and  morality  commonly 
erect. 

§  3.    The  Sanction  of  Desire 

238.  The  next  epoch  of  the  child's  life  is  that  which 
has  been  called  the  epoch  of  intelligence.  We  need  not 
stop  to  trace  the  development  of  this  stage  of  his  progress, 
since  we  may  assume,  from  the  former  analysis,  some- 
thing of  the  method  of  it.  The  characteristics  of  the 
period,  considered  over  against  the  earlier  or  spontaneous 
period,  have  also  been  described.  It  remains  here  to 
analyze  out  a  little  more  closely  the  reasons  for  action 
which  prompt  him  in  this  great  period  of  his  attainment, 
and  see  what  relation  they  bear  to  the  earlier  forms  of  his 
personal  sanction.  . 

The  word  '  desire '  covers  an  essential  aspect  of  intelli- 
gent action  both  in  popular  speech  and  in  psychological 
science.  In  popular  speech  intelligent  action  is  action 
which  shows  foresight.  In  psychological  terms  it  is 
action  which  is  directed  to  an  end.  The  main  thing  in 
both  these  usages  is  the  distinction  which  they  make 
between  such  action,  and  that  which  does  not  show  fore- 
sight, or  does  not  have  an  end  in  view.  The  nature  of 
this  end  we  have  touched  upon  briefly  on  an  earlier  page, 
where  we  saw  the  difference  between  the  simple  sug- 
gested or  impulsive  action  which  looks  only  to  the  ter- 
minus present  in  the  immediate  situation  or  stimulating 
event,  and  that  which  has  foresight  for  what  is  to  a 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  373 

degree  distant  in  space  and  time.  So  when  we  come  to 
ask  the  sanction  for  the  action  which  we  call  intelligent, 
we  are  led  to  ask  how  the  fact  of  having  a  more  or  less 
remote  end  complicates  the  consciousness  of  action. 

239.  Appeal  to  fact  shows  that  there  are  again  two 
cases  which  should  be  carefully  distinguished.      In  the 
first  place,  there  is  the  action  which  is  still  of  the  impul- 
sive type ;  and  second,  there  is  the  action  of  the  hedonic 
type  (applying  that  phrase  to  acts  which  are  influenced 
by  the  presence  of  the  hedonic  colouring,  as  already  de- 
scribed);  both,  however,  being  now  at  the  higher   level 
of  desire. 

In  the  one  case  the  simple  thought  of  the  end  or  object 
sets  agoing  the  desire  to  compass  or  attain  it.  This  we 
may  call  '  spontaneous '  desire.  It  is  relatively  compli- 
cated, and  follows  more  or  less  deliberation  on  alternative 
courses  of  action,  with  voluntary  choice  of  the  particular 
end  or  thought  which  the  actor  goes  on  to  realize.  But 
still  it  has  in  common  with  impulse  the  character  that  it 
is  the  objective  terminus — the  thing  or  event  —  on  which 
the  energies  of  realization  are  bent.  The  object  is  for- 
ward and  soul-filling  in  the  lower  forms  of  desire.  There 
is  very  little  thought  of  self,  of  the  remote  ends  to  be 
striven  for,  of  distinction  and  choice  of  means,  of  de- 
sirable or  undesirable  consequences.  The  child  sets  his 
face  toward  an  object,  a  thing,  and  lets  the  action  neces- 
sary to  its  attainment  take  care  of  itself,  very  largely 
by  the  same  impulsive  and  semi-automatic  outgo  which 
characterizes  the  epoch  of  impulse.  As  before,  the  sanc- 
tion is  almost  or  quite  contained  in  the  necessity  of  im- 
pulse and  suggestion,  but  these  are  complicated. 

240.  But  we  soon  find  a  change  coming  over  the  youth- 


374  H™  Personal  Sanctions 

ful  consciousness  with  the  growth  of  his  reflection.  We 
have  seen  this  growth  most  richly  and  normally  in  the 
development  of  the  child's  own  personal  self;  in  the 
thought  he  has  of  himself,  and  the  antithesis  which  he 
gets  between  himself  and  the  '  other-self  '  of  his  playmate 
or  parent.  This  is  so  all-embracing  a  growth  that  other 
concerns  of  the  child,  in  the  epoch  between  the  second 
and  fifth  years,  say,  sink  into  relative  insignificance.  This 
growth  in  personal  completeness  shows  itself  in  '  reflective ' 
desire. 

To  be  brief,  we  may  say  that  in  '  reflective '  desire  there 
is  a  growing  tendency  to  the  implication  of  the  sense  of 
self.  The  slowly  developing  synthesis  which  stands  for 
self  is  set  over  against  the  partial  events  of  experience, 
the  whole  against  the  isolated  parts,  and  just  as  the  syn- 
thesis of  self  has  already  grown  to  be  what  it  is  by  the 
incorporation  and  assimilation  of  new  elements  from  ex- 
perience, so  the  process  tends  to  complete  and  extend 
itself.  The  measure  of  success  in  the  past  is  reflected  in 
the  attitudes  toward  the  events  of  the  future.  Discrimi- 
nation in  the  value  of  events  is  due  to  the  operation  of 
the  assimilating  tendencies  which  former  syntheses  have 
established.  The  hedonic  colouring  of  the  former  experi- 
ences has  arisen  from  the  degree  of  adaptation,  or  the 
contrary,  of  detached  experiences  to  the  demands  of  per- 
sonal growth ;  the  ratification  of  the  adaptations,  and 
revulsion  from  the  misadaptations,  gives  just  the  twofold 
attitude  of  desire.  So  there  comes  now  into  conscious- 
ness a  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  child  to  reflect  —  to 
weigh  the  new  as  well  as  the  old  —  by  the  standards  of 
reference  supplied  by  his  thought  of  self.  Can  I  apper- 
ceive  this  thing  consistently  with  the  former  apperceptive 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  375 

system  built  up  in  experience,  or  will  it  tend  to  disintegra- 
tion ?  The  former  demand  is  presented  by  my  states  of 
positive  desire,  which  are  indices  of  the  advantage,  the 
pleasure,  of  living  as  a  person.  The  latter  represents  my 
repulsions,  —  my  negative  desires,  my  states  of  pain,  as  I 
think  of  myself  in  the  light  of  my  own  history. 

Reflective  desire,  is,  therefore,  the  concrete  determination 
of  the  sense  of  self.  It  represents  motor  integrations  about 
to  issue  in  particular  pathways.  It  is  the  conserving, 
assimilating,  compacting  engine  of  experience,  by  which 
the  old  adjustments  of  materials  in  the  unity  of  a  self  are 
reinstated ;  this  on  the  side  of  habit,  of  retrospective 
reference.  But  desire  is  also  the  agent  of  the  further 
development  of  the  self-sense,  since  it  is  through  the 
imitative  aspect  of  desire,  the  aspect  under  which  desire 
secures  new  accommodations,  new  satisfactions,  that  new 
increments  are  made  to  personal  attainment,  and  the  self- 
nucleus  is  enlarged.  It  has  thus  always  a  prospective 
reference  as  well,  which  is  very  prominent  in  the  psy- 
chosis itself. 

241.  Now  if  this  is  what  desire  is,  considered  geneti- 
cally as  a  state  of  mind,  what  shall  we  say  of  the  sanctions 
which  arise  for  the  intelligent  actions  prompted  by  desire  ? 
In  answer  to  this  question  it  is  well  to  look  at  the  so-called 
'  end  of  desire '  a  little  more  closely. 

Remembering  our  earlier  result  as  to  the  end  of  intel- 
ligent action J  —  that  it  is  simply  the  content  itself  which 
furnishes  an  appropriate  terminus  for  the  act  —  that  is 
a  sufficient  determination  also  of  the  end  of  desire  of 
the  spontaneous  kind.  But  certain  of  its  implications 
in  the  case  of  reflective  desire  should  be  pointed  out 

1  Above,  Chap.  VII.,  §  i  (especially  Sect.  161).     . 


376  His  Personal  Sanctions 

If  the  genetic  function  of  reflective  desire  is  to  set  action 
in  directions  which  conserve  and  forward  the  assimilative 
and  progressive  synthesis  of  self,  then,  is  not  the  end  of 
desire  what  the  idealistic  thinkers  are  telling  us  —  self- 
realization  f  Undoubtedly,  it  seems  to  me,  when  looked 
at  from  a  theoretical  point  of  view.  But  is  it  not  equally 
clear  that,  from  that  point  of  view,  as  illustrated  by  this 
philosophy,  it  is  impossible  to  get  at  the  subjective  end  of 
desire  at  all  ?  We  may  say  that  by  his  desires  the  child 
is  reflecting  the  sort  of  a  self  he  has  found  out  the  way  to 
be,  and  that  his  future  self  is  to  be  gained  and  enriched 
through  the  reactions  in  which  his  present  desires  lead 
him  to  indulge.  But  is  not  that  very  far  from  saying  that 
the  child  desires  to  conserve,  extend,  and  realize  the  self 
which  his  present  desires  are  calculated  to  secure  ?  This 
is  just  the  confusion  into  which,  in  the  mind  of  the  writer, 
this  formulation  of  the  end  of  desire  in  ethical  theory 
usually  falls.  And  the  confusion  becomes  all  the  plainer 
when  we  take  the  child  as  our  subject  of  investigation  at 
a  time  when  it  is  evidently  absurd  to  say  that  he  has  an 
adequate  sense  of  any  general  end  which  his  different 
desires  conspire  to  realize. 

If,  therefore,  we  say  that  self-realization  is  the  end  of 
desire,  in  the  sense  that  it  is  the  meaning  of  all  the  pro- 
cesses of  desire  looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  mental 
development  as  a  whole,  we  may  then  call  it  the  theoretical 
or  philosophical  end,  as  before  in  the  epoch  of  impulse  we 
found  a  theoretical  or  biological  end.  This  is  so  much  to 
the  good  in  our  theory  of  sanction,  since  in  self-realiza- 
tion we  have  the  theoretical  or  philosophical  sanction  for 
acts  of  reflective  desire.  But  then  we  may  inquire  further 
into  the  subjective  end  as  the  child  himself  .conceives  it. 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  377 

242.  In  the  first  place,  it  seems  essential  to  the  integrity 
of  the  objective  generalized  end  which  we  find  to  be  self- 
realization,  that  the  individual,  in  his  concrete  choices  and 
desires,  should  not  know  it  nor  aim  to  realize  it.     For  it  is 
a  generalization  based  upon  the  details  of  many  specially 
differentiated  functions,  each  of  which  must  do  its  normal 
part  in  the  scheme  of  the  whole.     Each  particular  act  and 
desire  represents  such  a  partial  function,  with  its  own  con- 
crete end.     Suppose  the  child  did  reflect  on  its  good  as  a 
whole,  and  did  come  to  judge  between  the  desires  which 
normally  arise,  might  it  not  divert  the  energies  of  life  into 
channels  very  far  from  the  realization  of  a  complete  self  ? 
And  is  not  this  just  what  men  of  mature  years  actually 
do,  when  they  come  by  reflection  to  construct  theories  of 
life,  and  to  set  up  ends  which  they  wish  to  realize  ?  —  thus 
interfering  with  the  spontaneity  of  desire,  and  deranging 
the  relative  adjustments  to  one  another  of   the  different 
moving  springs  of  our  personal  nature. 

In  the  second  place,  and  more  positively,  what  the  child 
does  aim  at  is  still  just  things  and  situations.  Yet  we  find 
a  new  development  in  the  constructive  processes  by  which 
he  reaches  his  sense  of  things  and  situations.  Distin- 
guishing, as  we  may,  between  his  sense  of  things  as  facts, 
and  things  as  objects  of  desire,  we  may  look  more  closely 
at  the  latter  as  related  to  the  former,  and  at  the  meaning 
of  the  antithesis  between  them. 

243.  In  general,  there  is  to  each  of  us,  both  a  world  of 
things  as  facts  and  a  world  of  things  as  desirable  objects. 
They  are  very  different,  considered  as  worlds.     The  world 
of  facts  is  common  to  us  all  very  largely ;  the  world  of 
desires  is  very  different  to  us  one  and  another.      In  a 
general  way,  these  two  worlds  coincide  bpth  with  each 


378  If  is  Personal  Sanctions 

other  and  in  different  persons,  since  the  world  of  desires 
has  its  points  of  origin  in  the  world  of  facts  ;  and  different 
men  are  constituted  enough  alike  to  make  the  trend  of 
their  desires  the  same.  But  in  any  concrete  case,  when 
it  is  a  question  as  to  the  desirableness  here  and  now  of  a 
particular  thing  or  action,  we  differ  largely  in  our  choices 
and  decisions. 

Considering  the  individual,  however,  we  find  a  sharp 
distinction  between  the  thing  as  it  exists  and  the  thing  as 
it  is  desired.  A  preliminary  of  desire  is  a  sense  of 
unreality,  want,  tendency  toward  a  thing  that  is  pictured, 
but  not  accomplished.  Let  us  call  the  thing,  object,  event, 
which  is  now  real  before  me,  A  ;  and  let  us  call  it  when  I 
desire  it,  in  its  absence,  a ;  then  let  us  see  what  the  differ- 
ence is  between  the  former,  considered  as  a  thing  that 
exists,  an  A,  and  the  latter,  the  thing  that  is  desired,  the  a. 

The  difference  is  this,  that  the  one,  the  A,  is  a  hard  and 
dry  skeleton  of  rigid  reality  held  in  the  grip  of  so-called 
mechanical  law,  whose  operation  is  indifferent  to  my  needs 
and  satisfactions.  In  its  origin,  as  a  fact,  I  get  it  just  by 
stripping  off  my  experience  of  its  personal  aspect  to  me, 
by  reading  out  the  personal  equation  element  from  it,  and 
leaving  out  there,  in  space  and  time,  only  what  is  common 
to  many  experiences  and  to  all  experiencing  individuals 
who  come  that  way,  and  get  the  perception  of  this  thing, 
this  A.  Such  is  the  w/iaf,  the  object,  the  thing,  apart 
from  my  desire. 

But  the  a,  on  the  contrary,  the  thing  as  desired,  is  very 
different  from  this.  That  bare  A,  out  there  in  space,  is 
not  what  I  think  of  when  I  set  it  forth  with  urgent  desire. 
I  set  toward  the  fact,  the  A,  it  is  true ;  but  I  think  of  -a 
very  different  sort  of  thing.  What  I  think  of,  in  desiring. 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  379 

is  an  experience,  a  rich  full  state  of  existence,  of  which 
the  thing  of  perception  is  the  nucleus,  but  which  flows 
over  and  around  this  nucleus  with  an  overflowing  that  is 
peculiar  to  me.  The  hard,  dry,  impersonal  fact,  A,  rigid 
in  its  obedience  to  law,  and  common  to  the  world  of  all 
men  the  same,  —  this  is  replaced  in  my  thought  by  a 
thing  which  awakes  all  sorts  of  reminiscences  of  pleasure, 
excitement,  association  trains,  social  intercourse,  self-satis- 
factions, etc. ;  and  all  this  is  there  —  a  great  bursting 
mind-full  of  treasurable  personal  meaning. 

This  means  what  we  saw  above :  that  the  apperception 
system  which  we  call  self,  is  involved  in  the  '  thing  of 
desire,'  the  a.  It  is  the  echo  of  my  personal  thought 
of  reality,  of  all  my  dealings  with  it,  of  all  that  I  have 
suffered  and  enjoyed  in  my  life  with  things  of  the  A  series, 
that  now  gives  desire  its  meaning.  It  is  an  assimilation 
function,  a  struggle  to  get  at  the  personal  meaning ;  this  it 
is  that  moves  me.  All  this  comes  over  me  when  the  thing 
is  not  present,  by  the  very  thought  of  its  possible  pres- 
ence ;  and  I  desire  the  object,  the  bare  thing,  only  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  the  consciousness  of  that,  and  of  the  need 
of  that,  which  serves  to  excite  all  this  moving  turmoil  in 
my  breast. 

If  this  is  so,  there  seems  to  be  some  ground  for  the  his- 
torical controversy,  already  referred  to,  as  to  the  '  object ' 
or  '  end '  of  desire. 

Some  have  said  that  men  act  directly  to  secure  the  a, 
the  thing  of  the  world  of  desire.  They  wish  to  bring 
back  all  the  rich  fulness  of  this  experience.  Others  say 
no,  that  is  not  what  men  consciously  strive  for ;  if  they  did, 
they  would  never  get  it.  They  strive  for  the  thing  of  fact, 
the  object  of  external  value ;  and  only  so  do  they  come 


380  His  Personal  Sanctions 

into  the  gain  of  more,  through  the  gain  of  it.  This  point 
has  already  been  before  us,1  and  our  examination  shows 
that  the  distinction  is  largely  one  of  development.  The 
pursuit  of  the  object  A  is  typical  of  what  we  have  called 
'  spontaneous '  desire.  Yet  for  our  present  purpose  it  is 
important  to  see  that  the  distinction  involved  is  a  real  one. 

Generally,  when  most  spontaneous,  men  act  directly 
with  reference  to  the  object  of  fact  —  that  seems  plain. 
Yet,  in  that  case,  there  is  most  often  a  vaguely  conscious 
distinction  between  what  they  pursue,  and  what  they  have 
in  mind  as  impulse  to  the  pursuit;  that  latter  is  the  a,  the 
'thing  of  desire.'  This  is  usually  called  'motive,'  in  the 
best  use  of  that  word ;  and  I  shall  call  it  so,  reserving 
the  word  '  end '  for  the  actual  image,  the  thing  pursued,  in 
most  cases  the  A,  the  thing  of  fact.2 

244.  So  much  preliminary  to  the  question  of  sanction 
in  this  field  of  desire.  In  this  epoch,  the  motive  is  the 
sanction.  What  else  could  be  the  sanction  ?  There  is  no 
other  possible  sanction,  except  the  thing  of  fact,  toward 
which  desire  is  directed.  But  this  is  not  eligible  because, 
except  in  cases  of  purest  ideo-motor  automatism,  it  is  not 
the  real  content  of  consciousness.  Even  spontaneous 
desire  and  pure  impulse,  we  have  found  merging,  as  soon 
as  experience  widens,  into  that  state  in  which  a  hedonic 
element  enters  into  the  motive-complex.  Besides,  the 
thing  of  fact  is  a  common  element  in  many  states  of  con- 
sciousnesses, perhaps,  and  in  many  persons  at  once ;  and 
the  differing  attitudes  and  acts  which  result  call  for  very 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  Sect.  167. 

*  That  is,  '  motive '  includes  all  the  affective,  subconscious,  and  .motor 
processes  additional  to  the  intellectual  or  representative  images  which  consti- 
tute the  '  end.'  The  felt  self  is  largely  a  '  motive,'  and  not  an  '  end  '  element. 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  381 

different  sanctions.  In  other  terms,  the  rigid  stationary 
A,  the  thing  from  which  all  character  for  consciousness 
and  personal  life  has  been  abstracted,  just  for  the  purposes 
of  abstract  and  common  indifference  in  multiplied  situa- 
tions, —  the  bare  thing,  which  is  simply  there  at  all  times 
and  for  all  men,  —  cannot  be  at  the  same  time  the  justi- 
fication for  the  varied  and  differentiated  actions  which 
different  men,  at  the  same  time,  and  the  same  man  at 
different  times,  perform  with  reference  to  it. 

The  only  sort  of  intelligent  activity  that  it  could  sanc- 
tion would  be  the  pursuit  of  itself,  found  in  the  description 
of  the  facts  of  the  world  as  such ;  that  is,  in  science. 
Science  is  justified  of  her  own  children,  the  A's ;  but  desire 
may  rebel  against  science,  and  inevitably  seeks  to  supple- 
ment it.  Science  cannot  be  called  upon  to  legitimate 
the  children  of  desire. 

245.  The  pursuit  of  science,  however,  represents  a  real 
and  normal  sanction.  For  it  is  typical  of  the  more  general 
use  of  intelligence  seen  above  in  what  we  called  '  selective 
thinking.' l  The  selective  criteria  of  the  value  of  his 
thoughts,  considered  as  survivals,  are  generalized  in  the 
thinker's  mind  under  the  wider  term  'truth.'  The  corre- 
spondences discovered  and  tested  between  the  thoughts 
and  the  things  of  fact  are  held  in  a  system  of  truths ;  and 
the  activities  of  the  man,  no  less  in  society  than  in  the 
private  laboratory,  or  in  the  fields  of  external  nature,  must 
terminate  first  of  all  upon  this  system  of  truths.  Seeing, 
further,  that  the  satisfaction  of  desire  —  the  realization  of 
the  motive  entertained  —  is  conditioned  upon  the  attitudes 
suitable  to  reinstate  things  of  fact  inside  the  relationships 
of  truth,  truth  itself  becomes  a  recognized  subjective  or 
i  Chap.  III.,  §  3. 


382  His  Personal  Sanctions 

personal  sanction.  Truth,  thus  defined,  is  one  of  the  great 
and  controlling  sanctions  of  desire,  since  it  thus  becomes 
motive. 

246.  If   this   be   really  the   psychological   sanction    of 
desire,  —  i.e.,  the  motive,  defined  in  the  broad  way  that  it 
has  been  above,  —  then  an  act  would  seem  to  have  objective 
sanction  just  in  proportion  as  it  is  really  the  action  to  wliicli 
the  present  motive  in  its  fulness  prompts.     Does  this  action 
which  I  now  contemplate  really  carry  out  the  desire  which 
I  have  toward  a  given  object  of  fact  ?     Normally  it  must, 
if  it  issue  from  the  full  state  of  consciousness  which  con- 
stitutes the  desire.     Then,  in  that  case,  the  appropriate- 
ness being  granted,  the  action  secures  the  thing,  in  greater 
or  less  degree,  and  with  that  the  desire  is  satisfied.     The 
sanction,  then,  is  maintained  in  consciousness  in  propor- 
tion  to  the  success  of  the  action  to  which  the  thought 
prompts ;  and  we  reach  the  general  truth  that,  for  intelli- 
gent action,  prompted  as  it  is  by  desire,  the  objective  sanc- 
tion is  success.1 

247.  Success  becomes  the  subjective  sanction  also  when 
it  is  made  motive  in  reflective  consciousness ;  and  it  so  soon 
becomes  the  individual's  criterion  of  the  desirableness  of 
an  action  that  we  may  speak  on  occasion  of  the  sanction 
of  success  as  representing  the  individual's  motive. 

Of  course  there  are  cases  in  which  the  action  which 
follows  on  a  desire  is  not  really  appropriate  to  it :  cases 
in  which  the  action  does  not  succeed.  Then  the  man 
laments  his  conduct,  seeing  that  he  has  not  done  well. 

1  This  simply  means,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  imitative  character  of 
volition,  the  reinstatement  of  the  '  copy '  (motive)  series  which  releases  the 
action.  It  illustrates  also,  in  concrete  cases,  the  philosophical  sanction  of  self- 
realization. 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  383 

In  such  cases  we  have  really  no  departure  from  the 
formula  reached  just  now.  For  in  that  case  the  man  is 
lacking  in  intelligence  or  in  experience.  For  him  the 
action  was  sanctioned ;  for  us  it  departs  from  the  intelli- 
gent type.  He  may  say,  'what  a  fool  I  have  been  to 
do  this,'  or  '  how  I  was  misled  in  this  scheme ' ;  but 
objectively  his  object  of  desire  was  not  attached  to  the 
proper  objects  of  fact;  or  his  construction  of  the  object 
of  desire  did  not  proceed  by  a  proper  interpretation  of 
experience;  or  the  train  of  action  was  so  complex  that 
he  could  not  trace  out  the  end  from  the  beginning,  and 
so  missed  a  link  or  two ;  or  perhaps  he  did  not  estimate 
the  bearing,  upon  his  scheme  of  life,  of  the  influence 
of  the  desires  and  conduct  of  others,  or  the  presence  of 
his  own  changing  emphasis  upon  other  things  of  fact. 
All  these  influences  and  many  others  make  his  actual 
success  problematical  and  so  seem  to  take  away  the  sanc- 
tion when  his  consciousness  comes  to  take  an  ex  post  facto 
point  of  view.  At  the  time,  doing  the  best  he  could, 
his  action  was  sanctioned  for  him  by  the  motive  ;  but  in 
its  results,  both  for  the  on-looker  and  for  him,  it  finds  its 
sanction  in  the  success  which  it  proves  more  or  less  suited 
to  bring. 

Success  considered  as  personal  sanction  is  also  rein- 
forced by  the  sanction  of  truth.  For  every  truthful  corre- 
spondence between  thought  and  fact  represents  the  suc- 
cessful carrying  out  of  the  thought  in  the  world  of  fact. 
So  we  are  the  more  justified  in  speaking  of  success  as  the 
sanction  of  intelligence,  seeing  that  it  is  operative  in  both 
spheres,  i.e.,  those  of  fact  and  desire. 

248.  There  are  further  psychological  questions  which 
arise  here ;  but  I  shall  only  take  up  a  phase  or  two  of  the 


384  His  Personal  Sanctions 

case  by  which  our  inquiry  may  be  advanced  into  the  social 
life,  at  this  epoch  of  intelligence. 

The  child's  thought  of  self  is,  as  will  be  remembered, 
identified  with  two  somewhat  opposed  systems  of  emotional 
and  active  expressions.  It  was  one  of  the  results  of  our 
examination  of  the  early  sense  of  self,  that  we  found  it 
showing  a  certain  duality  in  the  midst  of  its  growing 
definiteness.  There  is  in  action  a  necessary  distinction 
between  the  self  of  aggression,  self-assertion,  selfishness, 
in  short ;  and  the  self  of  imitation,  sympathy,  accommoda- 
tion, altruism.  If  this  be  true,  then  what  we  have  found 
about  the  sanctions,  both  in  the  impulsive  and  in  the  in- 
telligent period,  must  be  held  to  with  a  view  of  these  two 
forms  of  the  thought  of  self.  If  actions  are  so  different 
as  to  be  worthy  of  the  two  opposed  terms  '  egoistic '  and 
'  altruistic,'  then  the  motive-sanctions  from  which  they 
spring  must  be  different  too. 

As  to  the  impulsive  period,  the  difference  is  not  of  much 
theoretical  importance,  since  the  whole  active  life  is  given 
over  to  impulse ;  but  it  is  then  a  question  of  great  practical 
importance  whether  the  facts  show  both  these  two  kinds 
of  reaction  in  the  child.  Is  he  a  creature  of  so-called  gen- 
erous as  well  as  of  so-called  selfish  impulses  ?  The  facts 
give  no  room  for  doubt,  as  I  have  had  occasion  to  point  out 
above  in  some  detail.  The  child  acts  under  the  sanction 
of  impulse  or  necessity  whether  he  act  in  one  way  or  in 
the  other.  This  may  be  left  here,  only  stopping  to  say 
that  the  consideration  of  the  social  sanction  which  is  to  fol- 
low in  the  next  chapter  takes  it  as  its  point  of  departure. 

But  coming  to  the  epoch  of  intelligence,  to  the  ques-- 
tion  of  the  sanction  of  desire,  we  find  it  necessary  to 
make  further  distinctions.  If,  as  we  found  reason  for 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  385 

believing,  the  motive,  the  object  of  desire,  the  thing  of  the 
world  of  desire,  as  opposed  to  the  thing  of  the  world  of 
fact,  is  a  construction  in  which  the  sense  of  self  is  the 
assimilating  thing ;  if  it  is  this  thought  which  goes  out  in 
its  own  power  of  attractiveness  to  absorb  the  things  of 
fact  into  its  forms  of  personal  construction,  then  we  have 
to  ask  at  once,  which  of  the  two  normal  thoughts  of  self 
is  it  that  does  this.  Is  the  thing-of-desire  an  egoistic  thing- 
of-desire  or  an  altruistic  thing-of-desire  ?  Is  it  I,  the  self- 
ish, aggressive,  self-asserting,  domineering  self  which 
desires ;  or  is  it  I,  the  imitative,  teachable,  generous,  altru- 
istic, self-denying  self  which  desires  ?  Or  is  it  both,  or  is 
it  neither  ? 

Of  course  it  must  be  both,  either  separately  or  together. 
It  cannot  be  the  two  together  at  the  earlier  stages  of 
the  growth  of  the  sense  of  self ;  since  there  has  not  yet 
arisen  the  assimilation  of  the  partial  thoughts  of  self  which 
"brings  them  together.  But  it  is  the  characteristic  of  the 
later  epoch  of  sentiment  —  ethical,  religious,  etc., —  as  has 
been  said,  that  there  grows  up  a  generalized  thought  of  self 
in  which  the  combined  motive  influences  of  all  the  personal 
thoughts  take  form  in  an  ideal  thought  to  which  the  par- 
tial semi-detached  thoughts  are  more  or  less  consciously 
subordinated.  If,  then,  we  keep  over  the  examination  of 
this  ideal  epoch  for  separate  inquiry  in  the  matter  of  sanc- 
tion, denning  the  epoch  of  desire  strictly  in  terms  of  the 
growth  of  intelligence,  and  the  ability  to  use  intelligence 
for  personal  purposes ;  then  we  must  say  that  the  two 
thoughts,  representing  self,  the  ego,  and  self,  the  alter, 
both  act  in  turn  to  stimulate  conduct,  and  so  each  gives 
its  own  sanction  to  the  sort  of  action  which  it  begets. 

249.    If   we  look   at   these   two   cases  in   a   somewhat 

2C 


386  His  Personal  Sanctions 

artificial  way  at  first,  we  see  what  sorts  of  personal  action 
would  thus  get  sanction.  Action  done  from  personal 
aggression,  pride,  self-assertion,  eager  egoism,  would  have 
the  private  ego  thought  as  its  motive  —  assimilating  to 
itself  the  things  of  fact,  the  circumstances  of  social  life, 
the  acts  of  others,  the  content  of  experience  generally ; 
and  success  in  bringing  all  these  agencies  and  materials 
into  subjection  to  the  selfish  movements  of  the  individual 
would  be  its  reward.  This  seems  to  be  realized,  in  the 
main,  in  the  period  of  childhood  from  the  second  to  the 
fourth  years  (say).  I  have  already  cited  some  of  the  facts 
which  show  the  selfish  use  which  the  child  makes  of  his 
intelligence  when  he  is  just  learning  that  he  has  it  and 
can  use  it  to  his  personal  advantage.  He  hoodwinks  his 
juniors,  circumvents  his  attendants,  attempts  to  deceive 
his  elders.  The  use  of  intelligence  in  this  way  is  one  of 
the  first  reasons  for  the  genuine  '  lie '  in  child  life.  His 
sanction  is  success ;  simply  that.  That  is  his  rule  of 
action,  and  he  has  no  reason  for  hesitating  to  apply  it, 
except  as  his  acts  themselves  or  the  copies  which  he  is 
called  upon  urgently  to  imitate  bring  out  the  other  and 
different  thought  of  self,  so  arouse  his  sympathy,  and 
bring  on  a  conflict  for  temporary  supremacy  between  the 
two  thoughts  of  self.  There  are  also  men  in  society  whom 
we  instinctively  class  as  selfish,  and  often  they  are  very 
gifted  in  the  matter  of  intelligence.  Such  men  use  the 
social  environment  for  their  personal  advantage.  And 
there  is,  of  course,  the  criminal  whose  selfish  line  of  con- 
duct not  only  illustrates  his  life  under  the  sanction  of 
personal  success,  but  who  also  puts  to  defiance  the  sanc- 
tions which  society  attaches  in  the  way  of  penalties  and 
rewards  to  actions  of  a  different  kind. 


Tke  Sanction  of  Desire  387 

While  not  intending  to  discuss  social  theories  at  this 
point,  yet  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  point  out  here  the  ground 
which  an  individualistic  theory  of  society  has  to  rest  upon 
when  we  consider  man  simply  from  the  point  of  view  of 
intelligence  operating  under  the  sanction  of  personal  de- 
sire. The  stress  of  individual  competition  tends  directly 
to  justify  the  pursuit  of  success.  '  Nothing  succeeds  like 
success '  is  its  motto.  There  are  great  departments  of 
human  competitive  life  in  which  this  sanction  is  never 
repealed  nor  even  much  modified. 

250.  Yet  to  say  that  this  is  the  only  sanction  of  intelli- 
gent conduct  is  to  deny  the  other  motive  which  is  correlative 
with  this.  The  thought  of  self  as  an  ego  is  psychologically 
impossible  without  its  correlative,  the  thought  of  self  as  an 
alter.  The  reaction  of  emotion  and  conduct  to  this  latter 
is  as  original  as  that  to  the  former.  The  child  does  seem 
to  show  a  great  liking  at  the  period  of  dawning  intelligence 
for  the  selfish  exercise  of  his  newly  acquired  power.  But 
the  other  side  of  his  nature  does  not  die.  I  have  already 
pointed  out  reasons  for  the  one-sidedness  of  his  develop- 
ment for  a  time  at  this  epoch.  It  is  mainly  for  purposes 
of  exercise,  training,  practice,  strengthening,  that  the  intel- 
ligence is  used  so  much  for  selfish  ends  at  this  period.  We 
very  soon  find  in  the  child  a  sort  of  reaction  to  the  other 
pole.  He  begins  to  widen  the  circle  of  his  concern.  His 
selfishness  varies  according  as  he  is  in  the  household  or  out 
of  it.  He  begins  to  show  actions  of  meditated  generosity. 
All  this  has  already  been  dwelt  upon.  The  essential  thing 
is  that  this  generous  conduct  also  has  its  sanction  in 
exactly  the  same  sense  that  the  selfish  conduct  has.  The 
self  which  now  constructs  the  things  in  the  world  of 
desire  is  an  alter ;  it  fills  consciousness ;  its  normal  issue 


388  His  Personal  Sanctions 

is  in  sympathetic,  disinterested  action  ;  the  sanction  belong- 
ing to  this  type  of  motive  is  success  in  the  sort  of  action 
which  is  normal  to  it ;  and  that  makes  success  in  being 
generous  a  tiling  of  normal  intelligent  sanction.  It  is 
quite  analogous  to  the  normality  of  impulsive  action  of 
both  kinds,  —  that  which  seems  to  be  selfish  and  that 
which  seems  to  be  generous ;  both  are  so  elementarily 
natural  that  the  presence  of  each  is  the  sanction  of  each. 
So  in  the  sphere  of  intelligence,  where  a  construction  of 
desire  is  induced  upon  the  thing  of  fact  on  which  the 
desire  terminates,  the  construction  takes  two  equally  nor- 
mal forms. 

The  theoretical  determination  of  the  sanction  of  desire, 
therefore,  in  terms  of  success  must  include  both  cases,  and 
extend  to  action  of  the  two  distinct  types  :  action  of  the 
strenuously  selfish  competitive  type  and  action  of  the  self- 
denying,  generous,  co-operative  type.  Each  represents  an 
intelligent  form  of  success. 

251.  Another  point  may  be  taken  up  before  we  go  on 
to  more  complicated  stages  of  development.  It  is  the  rela- 
tion of  the  sanction  of  intelligent  action  to  that  which  jus- 
tifies impulsive  action. 

The  former  supersedes  and  inhibits  the  latter,  whenever 
it  is  a  question  between  the  two;  or  it  tends  to  do  so. 
In  case  it  does  not,  then  there  is  a  violation  of  all  sanction 
in  the  mind  of  the  actor.  Impulse  is  the  servant  of  reason. 
If  it  becomes  the  master  by  its  intrinsic  intensity  or  by  the 
weakness  of  the  sanction  of  intelligence,  then  action  be- 
comes unreasonable,  and  impulse  is  again  the  only  justifi- 
cation as  before  the  intelligence  arose.  But  when  the 
intelligence  recovers  itself  and  begins  to  judge  the  situa- 
tion from  its  own  point  of  view,  then  the  absence  of  any 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  389 

sanction  higher  than  that  of  temporary  necessity  comes 
into  consciousness  as  a  sense  of  profound  regret.  Again 
the  actor  says:  'What  a  fool,  child,  lunatic,  I  was.' 
When  taken  in  the  general  economy  of  personal  develop- 
ment, this  is  a  thing  of  great  importance ;  for  it  repre- 
sents the  passage  of  consciousness  into  the  new  and 
all-important  sphere  of  intelligent  adaptation  to  men  and 
things.  As  long  as  impulse  is  uncontrolled,  there  is  no 
governor  on  the  wheels  of  the  human  machine.  The  bio- 
logical justification  is  the  only  justification.  Impulse  is  a 
thing  of  blind  action,  save  to  the  theorist  on  the  principles 
of  biological  development.  But  when  intelligence  comes 
upon  the  scene  with  its  selection  of  means  to  ends,  and  its 
utilizing  of  the  forces  of  life  and  impulse  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  designs  all  its  own,  thus  bringing  some  meas- 
ure of  control  and  balance  into  the  warfare  of  impelling 
activities,  then  a  new  era  begins,  not  only  in  the  individual, 
but,  as  we  have  had  reason  to  think  from  the  point  of  view 
of  his  social  equipment,  also  in  society.  Think  of  the  dif- 
ference between  self-control  and  license,  between  the  judge 
and  the  mob,  between  the  child  kicking  against  the  pricks 
and  the  man  removing  them  by  his  genius,  and  you  have 
something  of  what  the  entrance  of  the  sanction  of  intelli- 
gence means  in  the  history  of  man.  Consistency  arises 
out  of  chaos,  steady  purpose  and  plan  of  life  succeed 
capricious  indulgence  in  fragmentary  enjoyments,  econ- 
omy of  mental  and  vital  energy  follows  reckless  waste 
and  unavailing  struggle.  What  a  wonderful  thing  is 
self-control,  even  where  it  is  directed  to  ends  not  the 
best !  How  great  is  success  even  when  its  sphere  is  igno- 
ble !  And  how  the  man  with  a  distant  end  lays  his  game 
for  the  self-betrayed  man  of  impulse  and  emotion,  not  only 


390  His  Personal  Sanctions 

maintaining  ends  of  calmness  and  sobriety,  but  using  the 
other's  forces  perhaps  wherewith  to  accomplish  them  ! 

252.  Finally,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  distinction 
between  the  world  of  things  and  the  world  of  desire  extends 
itself  into  the  realm  of  social  activity  as  well ;  and  in  it  we 
find  certain  of  the  most  subtle  and  interesting  movements 
which  inspire  and  agitate  the  individual.  Persons  as  well 
as  things  are  different  in  the  kind  of  existence  which  they 
have.  A  person  may  be  to  another  an  A  in  the  world  of 
fact,  —  indeed  must  be, — and  also  an  a  in  the  world  of 
desire.  A  person  as  a  mere  A,  a  fact,  a  thing,  from  which 
experiences  are  expected,  as  they  are  from  a  chair  or  a 
door,  is  only  a  recognized  object;  and  he  may  also  be 
a  matter  of  desire,  or  he  may  not.  His  existence  may  be 
as  indifferent  to  me  as  that  of  the  chair ;  but  it  may  be  as 
vital  to  me  as  is  the  mother  to  the  child,  or  friend  to  friend 
when  '  help  faileth  and  the  mourners  go  about  the  streets.' 
The  ego  may  knit  this  or  that  alter  to  itself,  so  that  there 
is  one  self  and  I  am  you ;  or  the  alter  may  be  the  enemy 
to  life  and  peace,  and  tolerance  of  him  cease  to  be  a 
virtue. 

This  development  of  the  personal  presences  of  others 
into  objects  of  desire,  while  they  remain  also  things  of 
fact,  is  fruitful  of  much  of  our  intelligent  action.  I  may 
treat  you  as  a  thing,  in  order  to  win  you  as  a  person.  Or 
I  may  cater  to  you  as  a  person  with  a  pretence  of  affection 
when  to  me  really  you  are  as  a  thing,  and  my  end,  my 
real  desire,  goes  beyond  you.  In  other  words,  intelli- 
gence may  manipulate  its  personal  material,  as  it  does  the 
external  world,  bending  the  things  to  secure  the  desires ; 
and  having  the  same  sanction  for  so  doing  as  in  the  former 
case  —  as  merciless  as  it  seems  —  the  sanction  of  success. 


The  Sanction  of  Desire  391 

Except  —  and  this  is  where  there  arises  one  of  the 
subtleties  of  the  situation  —  except  that  in  this  case  the 
use  of  the  person  as  a  mere  thing,  a  means  to  some  remote 
end,  tends  to  conflict  with  the  necessary  thought  of  the 
alter  as  one  himself  having  desires,  and  intrinsically 
arousing  sympathy.  This  is  a  complication  which  actu- 
ally arises  in  society  as  well  as  in  individual  conduct.  For 
example,  the  opposition  to  vivisection,  and  in  general  the 
unwillingness  to  use  living  animals  for  human  purposes, 
illustrates  just  this  case.  Here  the  intelligent  end  requires 
the  use  of  living  things  simply  as  things,  as  means,  deny- 
ing them  the  right  to  be  elevated  in  themselves  to  the  rank 
of  objects  of  desire,  or  of  personal  worth.  But  the  sympa- 
thetic impulses  go  out  by  necessity  toward  the  thought  of 
a  suffering  alter.  So  a  conflict.  Of  course  there  is  no 
reasonable  conflict.  Sympathy  is  an  impulse,  and  its 
sanction  is  necessity,  —  considered  apart  from  any  ethical 
sanction  which  other  elements  may  give  it,  —  while  the 
intelligent  end  is  a  thing  of  adaptation,  and  so  claims  the 
right  to  precedence.  The  end  sanctions  the  vivisection, 
i.e.,  the  successful  solving  of  the  biological  problem  that  is 
set.  Whether  the  solving  of  the  problem  in  a  particular 
case  is  a  worthy  end  —  that  brings  in  again  the  ethical 
standards  at  a  higher  level ;  but  if  intelligence  sanctions 
vivisection,  that  is  sufficient  as  against  merely  impulsive 
sympathy. 

The  complication  is  seen  also  in  the  cases  where  we  give 
pain  to  an  individual  for  his  own  good.  Many  a  mother 
knows  the  fearful  character  of  this  situation  ;  when  she  is 
driven  to  torture  her  child  for  his  larger  happiness,  as  in 
the  case  of  a  necessary  surgical  operation.  In  this  case 
there  are  no  less  than  three  thoughts  of  the  same  child  in 


392  His  Personal  Sanctions 

the  mother's  mind  :  the  child  of  fact,  diseased;  the  child  of 
sympathy,  suffering  the  knife ;  and  the  child  of  desire, 
cured.  The  first  of  these,  the  child  of  fact,  is  in  a  meas- 
ure an  abstraction ;  but  unless  he  be  enough  a  reality  to 
lead  to  the  inhibition  of  the  impulsive  action  of  repelling 
the  surgeon  which  finds  its  sanction  in  the  child  of  sym- 
pathy, the  action  of  intelligence  could  never  be.  For  then 
there  could  not  be  constituted  the  child  of  desire  from 
which  this  action  of  intelligence  proceeds. 

These  situations  are  sufficient  to  illustrate  the  embarrass- 
ments into  which  consciousness  may  fall,  even  at  the  rela- 
tively low  stage  of  development  before  the  rise  of  ethical 
and  social  sentiment.  How  weak  appear  the  constructions 
of  the  political  and  economical  writers  who  treat  desire  as 
a  sort  of  constant  quantity,  which  may  be  multiplied  into 
the  number  of  individuals,  and  so  serve  as  a  basis  for  a 
theory  of  value ;  or  identified  with  '  demand '  and  so  be 
correlated  with  '  supply."  And  this  complexity  is  nothing 
to  that  which  develops  in  the  higher  realm  into  which  con- 
sciousness grows,  as  personality  takes  on  its  ideal  forms. 

§  4.    The  Higher  Hedonic  Sanction 

253.  The  development  of  consciousness  in  the  way  now 
depicted  leads  to  a  refining  in  the  sense  of  pleasure  and 
pain  to  the  actor.  We  saw  that  the  hedonic  colouring  of 
experience  goes  over  largely  into  the  sense  of  self,  pro- 
ducing attitudes  of  the  personal  self  toward  individual 
things.  And  this  is  the  basis  of  the  '  thing  of  desire '  as  op- 
posed to  the  'thing  of  fact.'  The  thing  of  fact  remains  a 
thing  of  knowledge,  science,  observation ;  the  thing  of 
desire  becomes  that  rich  hedonic  experience  with  which 
the  self  is  immediately  identified. 


The  Higher  Hedonic  Sanction  393 

But  in  the  reflective  consciousness  another  movement 
often  takes  place ;  indeed,  always  takes  place  in  reference 
to  some  one  or  other  type  of  experience  in  this  mind  or 
that.  The  discovery  is  made  by  the  actor  himself "that  there 
is  just  this  distinction  between  things  as  facts  and  things 
as  objects  of  personal  d^ire.  He  comes  to  see  that  it  is 
not  the  object  per  se  that  he  strives  for,  but  the  states  of 
self  which  come  through  the  realization  of  the  things  of 
desire.  The  state  of  happiness  which  this  involves  is  thus 
isolated,  in  a  measure,  in  his  thought,  and  set  up  as  itself 
a  thing  of  desire.  He  generalizes  the  hedonic  experience 
as  such,  sets  it  before  him  as  an  end,  and  pursues  the 
objects  of  fact,  and  even  also  the  customary  objects  of 
desire,  for  the  sake  of  this  new  and  derived  object  of 
desire,  —  pleasure.  In  this  form  of  reflection  we  find, 
therefore,  for  the  first  time  realized,  a  pure  hedonism  of  the 
subjective  consciousness.  It  is  an  outgrowth  in  the  sphere 
of  desire,  as  the  corresponding  lower  hedonic  sanction 
already  spoken  of  is  in  the  sphere  of  impulse.  The  child 
acts  first  impulsively  toward  objects  as  things,  then  comes 
to  act  impulsively  toward  them  as  painful  things,  and  even 
as  pure  pains  (and  pleasures),  but  still  impulsively.  So  in 
the  sphere  of  desire,  the  first  action  of  reflective  desire 
is  toward  the  object  of  desire,  which  takes  the  place  of  the 
simple  thing  of  fact.  The  object  of  desire  is  constituted 
by  the  clustering  up  upon  the  experience  of  all  those  highly 
coloured  pleasurable  and  painful  states  which  go  to  pro- 
duce the  personal  attitudes  of  the  self.  Then,  finally,  the 
pleasure  as  thought  comes  to  be  itself  the  object  of  pursuit, 
and  the  agent  is,  when  acting  thus,  now  a  refined  reflective 
hedonist.  For  such  a  person  there  would  really  be  a 
'hedonic  calculus.' 


394  ff*s  Personal  Sanctions 

This  is,  then,  the  final  and  much-talked  of  hedonic 
sanction,  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  as  such.  It  represents 
the  most  refined  egoism,  in  the  sense  of  individualism.1  It 
shows  the  culmination  of  intellectual  development  consid- 
ered as  affording  a  type  of  sanction  for  conduct.  We  will 
see,  later  on,  under  what  conditions  it  is  actually  present 
in  social  life. 

§  5.    The  Sanction  of  Right 

254.  In  the  earlier,  more  psychological  consideration  of 
the  development  of  the  personality  sense,  we  saw  that  the 
growth  of  a  general  or  ideal  self  is  gradual,  coming  through 
the  continuation  of  the  process  of  imitative  accommodation, 
which  is  the  engine  of  all  mental  progress.  It  is  by  assimi- 
lation that  growth  proceeds ;  and  when  consciousness  is 
able,  under  the  leading  of  the  personalities  which  illustrate 
and  enforce  law,  to  assimilate  both  its  partial  thoughts  of 
self — the  selfish  and  the  generous  self  —  to  a  new  ideal 
thought  which  stands  for  this  law,  then  it  enters  the  sphere 
of  duties  and  rights.  Following  up  this  progress  in  the 
child  with  the  question  as  to  the  sanction  of  conduct  done 
at  this  highest  epoch  of  personal  development,  we  find 
before  us  a  set  of  conditions  of  great  complexity  and  diffi- 
culty. The  interest  of  the  topic,  however,  culminates  here, 
as  do  also  the  practical  bearings  of  it  in  social  matters ;  so 
we  may  try  to  get  some  glimmerings  of  light  on  the  sub- 
ject, mainly  from  the  carrying  out  of  the  principles  which 
we  have  found  reason  for  accepting  in  the  simpler  con- 
ditions already  explored. 

1  Yet  not  necessarily  as  anti-social  or  unaltruistic  in  the  channels  of  its 
expression  ;  for  the  pleasures  of  society  or  of  benevolence  might  be  pursued 
simply  as  pleasures.  Cf.  also  Sect.  260. 


The  Sanction  of  Right  395 

The  subjective  sanction  of  right,  that  which  impels  the 
agent  himself  to  recognize  and  perform  duty,  is  just  the 
sentiment  called  'ought,'  of  which  we  have  endeavoured 
to  find  out  something,  from  the  genetic  point  of  view,  in 
earlier  pages.  In  theory,  it  has  been  called  the  '  categorical 
imperative';  in  popular  language  it  is  called  'conscience.' 
It  is  not  within  our  province  to  pursue  speculation  further 
about  this  sentiment,  but  only  to  ask  how  the  presence  of 
this  sanction  in  the  individual's  own  breast  modifies  the 
reasons  for  action,  and  consequently  the  actions  themselves, 
which  we  found  him'  performing  in  the  earlier  epochs. 
Impulse  leads  to  action  by  '  necessity ' ;  intelligence  leads 
to  different  action,  with  view  to  '  success ' ;  both  of  these 
remain,  the  latter  modifying  the  demands  and  the  author- 
ity of  the  former.  Now  what  new  complications  arise  in 
the  operation  of  both  of  these,  when  oughtness  comes  to 
its  fruition,  and  man  feels  impelled  to  do  '  right '  ? 

255.  The  first  thing  to  be  remarked  about  this  new 
sanction  is  its  similarity,  in  the  person's  own  mind,  to  the 
sanction  of  impulse.  It  comes  with  no  adequate  or  detailed 
construction  of  content  by  the  thinker.  He  cannot  ex- 
plain his  reasons  for  pronouncing  conduct  right ;  he  has  no 
reasons.  He  cannot  picture  to  himself  or  communicate 
to  others  a  general  plan  of  life  which  will  cover  the  details 
of  action,  as  new  circumstances  arise ;  he  only  gets  a 
single  morsel  of  sanction  at  a  time  —  a  morsel  appropriate 
to  the  emergency  in  which  he  is  immediately  called  upon 
to  act.  In  this,  ethical  action  is  impulsive.  It  represents 
habit  facing  toward  law.  And  it  is  impulsive,  also,  in 
respect  to  the  form  of  quasi-necessity  with  which  its  in- 
junctions come  upon  him.  In  this  case,  it  is  true,  it  is  a 
new  form  of  necessity ;  it  does  not  play  itself  out  in  con- 


396  His  Personal  Sanctions 

duct  through  the  immediate  pressure  of  nervous  conditions. 
But  its  imperative  is  categorical,  and  it  executes  its  com- 
mands under  the  form  of  penalties  as  real,  though  not  the 
same,  as  those  which  the  lower  impulses  inflict.  It  is  from 
this  character,  as  quasi-impulsive,  that  the  ought-sanction 
gets  its  relation  to  the  others. 

256.  The  sanction  of  right  tends  to  supersede  the 
earlier  sanctions,  in  the  main,  and  that  because  it  repre- 
sents a  more  inclusive  form  of  mental  synthesis.  The 
generalization  of  the  thought  of  self  cannot  proceed  with- 
out the  subsumption  of  the  healthful  and  normal  but  par- 
tial selves.  We  can  have  no  ideal  thought  of  self  without 
using  the  partial  thoughts  which  contribute,  in  particular 
instances,  material  for  the  ideal.  The  impulsive  self,  with 
its  self-seeking  and  its  capricious  sympathy,  must  be  there; 
and  the  crafty,  intellectual  self  must  be  there ;  and  each 
must  urge  its  own  sanction,  for  it  is  only  through  the  rela- 
tive claims  of  these  thoughts  and  the  fitness  of  their  cor- 
responding appropriate  actions,  that  the  lawful,  regular, 
ethical  thought,  and  its  appropriate  action,  can  be  con- 
stituted. If  it  be  true  that  the  ideal  thought  requisite  to 
the  rise  of  ethical  sentiment  comes  by  the  generalization 
of  the  partial  and  lower  thoughts,  then  the  emerging  forms 
of  action  which  now  get  sanction  must  be,  in  some  way, 
a  reduction  of  the  earlier  forms  to  a  single  novel  type. 
This  leads  us  to  the  recognition  of  two  conclusions :  first, 
that  the  conduct  which  is  sanctioned  by  the  ought-sense 
exists  normally  and  naturally  by  the  side  of  the  other 
forms  of  action  in  the  same  person  ;  and  second,  that  it 
is  only  through  the  vitality  of  impulse  and  intellect  and 
their  normal  pressure  out  into  conduct,  that  this  new  union 
and  higher  adjustment  of  elements  can  take  place. 


The  Sanction  of  Right  397 

257.  The  entire  normality  of  the  ethical  sentiment,  and 
the  sanction  which  enforces  it,  deserve  emphasis  in  con- 
trast with  the  tendency  of  certain  writers  to  look  upon 
them  as  in  some  way  foreign  to  humanity,  and  as  only 
kept  in  operation  by  divine  agencies,  belief  in  supernatural 
penalties,  and  rewards,  etc.  As  opposed  to  this  concep- 
tion, we  see  that  the  sanction  of  duty  arises  from  the 
natural  play  of  the  impulses  and  intellectual  operations 
among  themselves,  just  as  we  have  also  seen  the  higher 
forms  of  religious  sentiment  come  up  naturally  from  the 
ethical.  The  growth  of  intellectuality,  considered  as 
breadth  of  view  and  competence  of  personal  judgment, 
carries  with  it  normally  growth  in  sensitiveness  of  feeling 
and  Tightness  of  ethical  attitude.  Intellectual  power  is 
primarily  growth  in  the  sense  of  personal  worth  and  char- 
acter based  on  widened  social  experience.  This  growth 
involves  the  entertainment  of  the  sanction  of  the  gener- 
ous desires  and  impulses  no  less  than  that  of  the  selfish 
desires  and  impulses.  So  the  outcome  — the  higher  and 
more  adequate  understanding  and  organization  of  the 
material  of  personal  and  social  life  —  brings,  by  its  very 
happening,  the  sanction  of  duty.  The  sanction  arises 
just  in  this  way,  and  in  this  way  only ;  its  adequacy  and 
fulness  of  influence  are  just  functions  of  the  adequacy  and 
comprehensiveness  of  the  synthesis  on  the  intellectual  side. 

Hence  no  dualism  of  thought  and  action  can  be  held  in 
this  highest  realm.  It  is  as  untrue  as  would  be  a  corre- 
sponding dualism  in  the  realm  of  intelligence  and  desire, 
i.e.,  a  dualism  which  should  hold  that  the  picturing  of  an 
object  is  natural  and  normal,  but  the  tendency  to  desire 
and  struggle  for  it  is  a  thing  of  extraneous  origin.  The 
only  possible  opposition  between  the  intellect  and  the 


398  His  Personal  Sanctions 

sense  of  right,  is  that  which  arises,  as  in  particular  rases, 
when  the  intellectual  process  represents  the  lower  synthe- 
sis of  personal  and  social  values  whose  sanction  is  success 
or  pleasure.  Then  the  opposition  is  sharp  enough.  The 
assimilation  of  the  act  which  intelligence,  at  this  lower 
stage,  urges  for  performance,  with  the  ideal  personal 
thought  about  which  the  sense  of  duty  hangs,  is  hindered 
or  thwarted.  It  was  therefore  a  real  intuition  of  the  Greek 
moralists  that  they  made  ethical  insight,  insight — reason, 
a  perfection  of  apprehension,  in  opposition  to  the  opinion 
and  perception  and  illusion  of  the  lower  cognitive  pro- 
cesses. Practical  reason  is  reason  still.  But  the  Greeks 
shared  the  view  which  we  are  now  criticising,  on  the  side 
of  the  origin  of  this  intuition,  inasmuch  as  they  found  it 
necessary  to  account  for  it  by  a  principle  of  illumination 
which  could  not  come  by  the  development  of  the  natural 
processes  of  experience.  A  dualism  between  reason  and 
sense  or  opinion  ran  through  Greek  thought  very  much  as 
the  dualism  of  thought  and  sentiment  is  current  now. 

As  opposed  to  both  dualisms,  we  must  hold  to  a  develop- 
ment process  with  two  aspects,  —  a  constructive  aspect  and 
an  active  aspect.  The  constructive  aspect  undergoes  de- 
velopment from  sense  to  thought ;  and  with  it,  representing 
the  constant  outcome  of  it,  the  active  aspect  undergoes  a 
corresponding  development  from  impulse  to  conduct,  from 
necessity  to  duty. 

258.  The  other  point  mentioned  above  is  also  suggestive 
of  certain  reflections.  It  opens  the  question  of  actual  con- 
tent and  play  of  functions  in  the  healthy  ethical  conscious- 
ness. The  determinations  already  made  show  us  that 
impulse  and  intelligence  must  be  there,  and  that  the 
normal  growth  of  the  ethical  sense  depends  upon  their 


The  Sanction  of  Right  399 

growth.  But  it  is  evident  that  further  definition  may  be 
made  of  the  influences  which  give  more  subtle  colouring 
to  the  phases  of  the  life  of  duty  —  phases  whose  variations 
produce  the  various  inequalities  and  pathological  tenden- 
cies in  the  moral  life. 

The  first  great  distinction  which  comes  up,  in  prosecut- 
ing this  inquiry,  is  that  which  we  have  already  found 
between  things,  considered  as  objects  merely,  things  as 
facts ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  things  considered  as  more 
or  less  implicated  in  the  progressive  thought  of  self,  tilings 
as  objects  of  desire.  We  saw  that,  even  in  the  life  of  intelli- 
gence, a  comprehensive  distinction  exists  here.  The  world 
of  things,  opposite  to  the  world  of  desire,  constitutes  a 
series  of  reasonably  constant  manipulable  terms,  which 
'  remain  put,'  so  to  speak,  in  certain  relationships,  are  capa- 
ble of  more  or  less  exhaustive  description  for  personal  and 
social  purposes,  and  have  a  relative  neutrality  of  presence 
to  us,  as  respects  our  active  lives  and  attitudes.  It  is  only 
as  these  things,  on  the  other  hand,  take  on  certain  rela- 
tionships to  persons  and  personal  uses  —  to  society,  in  some 
way  or  other,  in  short — that  they  are  then  constituted  ele- 
ments or  details  of  the  world  of  values.  The  mere  judg- 
ment of  existence,  which  is  a  mental  attitude  of  the  widest 
generality  and  of  the  least  importance  in  the  progress  of 
our  development,  —  since  it  is  the  presupposition  of  it  all,  — • 
yields  to  certain  graduated  judgments  of  value  which  are 
the  measuring  rods  of  desire. 

It  follows  from  this  that  there  may  be  two  very  different 
courses  of  development  in  the  intellectual  life  according 
as  the  material  with  which  it  prevailingly  deals  belongs  in 
one  or  other  of  these  fields,  —  the  world  of  facts  or  the 
world  of  desire.  One  person's  life-development  may  be 


400  His  Personal  Sanctions 

typical  in  that  it  is  the  pursuit  in  the  main  of  facts,  truths. 
The  pursuit,  of  course,  is  motived  in  desire ;  but  not  in 
things  as  objects  of  desire,  or  as  elements  in  the  social 
world  of  desire.  This  sort  of  intellectuality  we  have  al- 
ready recognized  in  the  scientific  tendency  which,  as  such, 
scouts  utility  and  seeks  only  truth.  The  self-thought  is 
ignored  largely  by  the  very  statement  of  the  material ;  the 
ideal  of  apprehension  is  without  prejudice  of  personal 
interest.  Tfee  only  reason  for  mentioning  this  here  is 
that  in  such  intellectual  development  we  see  the  absence 
of  values  just  in  so  far  as  all  human  and  social  desire  is 
absent.  Value  comes  only  from  the  introduction  of  the 
personal  thought,  and  the  measure  of  it  is  the  measure  of 
the  possible  assimilation  of  the  new  knowledge  which  a 
thing  affords,  to  the  attitudes  of  desire.  When  this  is 
done,  we  reach  the  opposite  pole  of  intellectual  operation, 
and  in  it  we  find  certain  obtrusive  characters  which  involve 
the  ethical  sanction. 

259.  The  ethical  life  is  pre-eminently  a  life  of  values. 
Its  objects  are  things  of  desire,  and  things  of  desire  at  the 
highest  level,  where  the  self-thought  is  general  or  ideal. 
As  to  the  line  between  thoughts  of  self  which  are  general, 
and  those  which  are  not,  it  is  usually  —  certainly  in  the 
developed  consciousness  —  quite  impossible  to  draw  it. 
After  the  ethical  sentiment  has  once  arisen,  in  conscious- 
ness, through  the  assimilation  of  the  partial  self-thoughts, 
a  habit  is  started  of  just  such  general  assimilation  ;  and  it 
is  then  doing  violence  to  the  normal  drift  of  growth  to 
isolate  either  the  ego  thought  or  the  alter  thought  and 
attempt  to  adjust  the  issues  of  life  to  either  alone  to  any 
great  extent.  The  whole  life  of  desire  takes  on  a  normally 
ethical  character.  '  What  ought  I  to  do  ? '  becomes  the 


The  Sanction  of  Right  401 

mind's  spontaneous  response  both  to  the  demands  of 
impulse  and  to  the  attractions  of  success. 

This  leads  to  the  recognition  of  a  social  value  in  all  the 
acts  of  life,  except  those  whose  performance  is  so  usual 
or  so  trivial  that  we  call  them  indifferent.  But  it  should 
be  noticed  that  real  indifference  cannot  be  predicated  of 
any  actions  which  have  a  personal  motive.  All  actions 
which  have  such  a  motive  are  ethical  and  social,  whether 
they  be  egoistic,  altruistic,  or  seemingly  neutral,  simply 
because  after  consciousness  has  once  fallen  into  the  way 
of  referring  the  partial  personal  thoughts  to  the  ideal 
thought,  all  actions  which  are  personal  at  all  have  a 
tacit  or  overt  value  as  compared  with  action  from  the 
ideal  point  of  view. 

The  result  then  is  this,  that  all  action  which  is  in  any 
sense  interested  is  ethical ;  and  upon  it  falls  the  ethical 
sanction,  after  the  person  has  once  entered  the  ethical 
epoch  of  growth.  The  intellectual  sanction  of  success, 
and  the  impulsive  sanction  of  necessity,  both  have  to 
yield  to  the  higher  requirements  of  duty,  or  to  violate 
them.  But  in  either  case,  the  requirements  are  there, 
and  consciousness  is  different  by  reason  of  their  pres- 
ence. The  ethical  sanction  has  a  direct  inhibitive  influ- 
ence upon  the  operation  of  the  lower  sanctions,  inasmuch 
as  no  one  of  them  is  to  be  considered  the  final  sanction 
of  the  act  which  emerges  from  the  crucible  of  ethical 
deliberation.  That  is  the  province  of  the  sense  of  ought 
or  of  duty ;  and  it  may  ratify  any  or  none  of  the  actual 
courses  of  conduct  which  the  earlier  sanctions  would 
otherwise  have  called  out. 

260.  This  leads  us  to  see  that  even  the  relative  conflict 
between  the  intellectual  and  the  ethical  which  seemed 

2D 


402  His  Personal  Sanctions 

to  arise  under  the  hedonic  sanction  (Sect.  253)  is  seldom 
real.  The  pursuit  of  the  dictates  of  self-interest  may  seem 
to  represent  a  form  of  rational  conduct  in  full  opposition 
to  the  forms  enjoined  by  the  ethical  sanction.  The 
sanction  of  success  may  be  enormously  developed  in  an 
individual  and  in  a  society,  without  a  corresponding  devel- 
opment of  the  ethical.  This  refinement  of  individualism 
would  now  seem  to  be  in  some  degree  abnormal.  Such 
intellectual  development,  as  far  as  it  is  self-interested, 
must  involve  normally  the  conscious  violation  of  the 
rights  of  other  persons,  and  so  must  arouse  some  ethi- 
cal feeling  after  such  an  individual  has  once  come  to 
be  ethical.  Pure  intellectualism  may  arise,  as  we  saw, 
before  the  conditions  are  such  that  the  ethical  is  devel- 
oped ;  but  after  that,  the  very  violation  of  moral  require- 
ments—  the  very  antithesis  which  we  are  discussing  — 
is,  in  the  individual  consciousness,  a  lively  sense  of  the 
ethical  sanction.  The  sanction  is  then  negative,  as  re- 
morse, sense  of  ill-desert  for  the  outrage  done  to  the 
imperative ;  but  it  is  ethical.  The  very  dissatisfaction  at- 
taching to  success  is  evidence  that  success  is  no  longer  the 
only  sanction  which  consciousness  has  come  to  recognize. 
261.  The  relation  of  this  sanction  to  the  other  and 
lower  ones,  together  with  the  variations  which  these  rela- 
tions may  show,  suggest  interesting  problems  for  the 
moral  pathologist  and  the  criminologist.  The  latter  sci- 
ence, criminology,  has  to  deal  with  the  social  applications 
and  bearing  of  the  ethical  sanction,  to  which  we  come 
again  below;  but  there  are  certain  derangements  of  the 
individual's  private  moral  life  which  may  lie  at  the  foun- 
dation of  his  public  conduct,  and  these  it  may  be  well 
to  point  out  very  briefly. 


The  Sanction  of  Right  403 

The  pathology  of  the  moral:  life  seems-  ta  be,  'like 
mental  pathology  generally  — -  apart  from  hereditary  de- 
fect in  the  same  direction,  —  simply  lack  of  normal  organ- 
ization or  systematization  of  experience.  The  works  of 
recent  pathologists  find  in  impairment  of  mental  synthesis 
or  organization  the  method  of  decay,  and  psychologists 
find  the  relative  success  of  the  particular  mind  or  of  the 
particular  mental  function  in  effecting  unity  of  attention 
and  thought,  the  measure  of  sanity  and  of  moral  probity.1 
The  work  of  the  French  pathologists,  headed  by  Charcot,2 
has  shown  that  alterations  of  personality,  will,  moral 
sense,  etc.,  are  due  to  the  falling  apart  of  the  material 
of  acquisition  into  different  or  disaggregated  centres  and 
syntheses :  to  the  failure  in  ability  to  get  hold  by  attention 
of  all  the  material  of  experience  and  memory,  and  so  to 
order  life  from  the  basis  of  the  whole. 

The  sort  of  mental  disease  found,  in  each  case,  depends 
upon  the  sphere  or  class  of  the  experiences  in  which  the 
disintegration  takes  place.  In  the  ethical  sphere  dis- 
ease manifests  itself  when  the  synthesis  of  social  and 
personal  materials,  necessary  to  the  form  of  organiza- 
tion called  the  personal  self,  is  not  normally  effected. 
Diseases  in  the  moral  life  are  essentially  diseases  of 
self-consciousness.  And  all  diseases  of  self-conscious- 
ness are  moral  diseases,  in  so  far  as  they  disturb  the 
sense  of  social  and  moral  values  by  impairing  the  ideal 
thought  of  self,  or  the  normal  subordination  of  the  par- 
tial thoughts  of  self  to  this  ideal.  All  these  perturba- 

1  I    have  gathered  evidence  for  this  general  position  in  my  Mental  De- 
velopment, Chap.  XIII.,  making  much  use  of  the  researches  of  M.  Pierre  Janet 
(Automatisme  Psychologique)  on  the  pathological  side. 

2  Charcot,   Lemons  sur   Us  Maladies   Mentales ;   cf.  Binet,  Alterations   of 
Personality. 


404  His  Personal  Sanctions 

tions  find  direct  social  reference  in  the  disturbance  of 
balance  between  the  sense  of  the  alter  in  relation  to 
the  ego,  and  misadjustments  in  their  common  relation- 
ships in  the  community. 

In  practical  cases  many  interesting  instances  show  the 
reality  of  this  sort  of  disturbance  and  the  havoc  which 
it  plays  with  the  balance  of  sanctions  in  the  moral  life. 
The  individual  may  become  exalted  in  his  thought  of 
his  personal  self,  with  a  corresponding  debasement  of 
the  alter  and  violation  of  social  and  ethical  rules.  Or 
he  becomes  melancholic,  through  debasement  of  self, 
with  correspondingly  exaggerated  sense  of  the  impor- 
tance, domination,  persecution,  etc.,  of  others.  In  these 
cases,  the  intellect  is  likely  to  be  sharpened  into  cunning 
and  subterfuge  at  the  expense,  and  in  consequence  of 
the  failure,  of  the  ethical.  There  is  always  a  tendency, 
through  the  general  loosing  of  the  bonds  of  higher  inhi- 
bition and  synthesis,  to  lapse  back  into  the  life  of  craft 
and  impulse.  There  results  often  a  creature  of  impulse 
and  suggestion.  His  fixed  idea  leads  the  rest  of  his 
mental  life  a  wild  chase ;  or  the  failure  even  of  one 
idea  to  intrench  itself  firmly  leads  to  the  general  besot- 
ting of  the  powers  in  a  life  of  animality.  All  sorts  and 
varieties  of  pathological  conditions  arise,  and  the  general 
concept  of  the  anti-social  comes  in  to  play  its  important 
part,  and  to  set  the  social  problems  which  arise  about 
the  criminal  insane.1 

1  So  also  the  case,  spoken  of  in  Sect.  201,  in  which  the  relative  balance 
between  the  private  and  public  ingredients  in  the  ideal  self  is  disturbed. 


CHAPTER   X 
His  SOCIAL  SANCTIONS:   SOCIAL  OPPOSITION 

262.  THE  social  sanctions  are  those  reasons  for  action 
which  bear  in  upon  the  individual  from  the  social  environ- 
ment. They  are  the  influences  which  have  become  in 
some  way  representative  in  social  life,  and  which  consti- 
tute the  more  important  elements  in  the  moral  atmosphere 
of  the  group  in  which  a  particular  individual  lives.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  we  have  already  had  a  concept 
similar  to  this  in  the  matter  of  so-called  '  social  heredity,' 1 
except  that  social  heredity  has  reference  to  the  bearing 
in  of  these  influences  upon  the  individual  to  affect  his 
inherent  and  normal  personal  growth  ;  that  is,  social 
heredity  describes  the  individual's  indebtedness  to  the 
social  influences  and  the  method  of  his  reception  of  them. 
It  does  not  attempt,  however,  to  define  the  specific  forms 
which  they  take  on  as  motive  influences  in  the  mind  of 
the  individual.  Nevertheless  to  answer  the  question  of 
social  sanction  is  to  carry  further  the  theory  of  social 
heredity. 

We  have  also  had  before  us  another  topic  which  comes 
into  close  connection  with  the  present  one  :  the  topic  of 
the  'social  aids  to  invention.'2  These  'aids'  we  found  to 
be  certain  instruments  of  social  use  which  the  child  ac- 
quires, and  which  serve  as  indispensable  helps  to  his 

1  Chap.  II.,  §  I.  2  Chap.  IV. 

405 


406     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

growth  into  the  social  heritage.  The  conclusions,  as  well 
as  the  methods  of  analysis  of  the  section  on  '  social  aids,' 
may  be  taken  as  showing  the  channels  through  which  the 
social  environment  administers  its  lessons  for  the  indi- 
vidual's growth — especially,  it  will  be  recalled,  in  the 
great  spheres  of  language,  literature,  art,  and  play. 

263.  Allowing   these  more  or   less  adequate   develop- 
ments, therefore,  to  set  us  our  further  problem,  we  find 
the  task  now  before  us  somewhat  shortened.     It  becomes 
the  question :  what  are  the  leading  objective  categories  of 
social  life  through  which  the  elements  of  the  individual's 
'  social  heritage '  have  crystallized  into  representative  insti- 
tutions during  the  growth  of  society  ?  and  in  what  way  do 
these   institutions   normally  exercise   sanctions   upon  the 
active  life  of  the  individuals  ? 

We  find,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  following  sets  of  insti- 
tutions in  society,  each  exerting  in  its  own  way  a  sanction 
upon  the  acts  of  individuals :  — 

Institutions  exercising  Social  Sanctions 

1.  Natural.  3.    Civil. 

2.  Pedagogical  and  Conventional.          4.    Religious. 

These  different  types  of  institutions  we  may  pass  briefly 
in  review,  not  at  all  for  purposes  of  description  nor  of 
theory,  but  simply  to  show  the  way  in  which  they  do,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  bear  in  upon  each  member  of  the  com- 
munity and  afford  him  more  or  less  urgent  sanctions  for 
his  conduct. 

§  i.    The  Natural  Sanctions 

264.  By  the   'natural'  institutions  of   society  I  mean 
those  sorts  of  social  organization  which  arise  directly  out 


The  Natural  Sanctions  407 

of  the  nature  of  man.  Such,  primarily,  is  the  family. 
The  relationships  of  the  family  are  typical  of  a  set  of  in- 
fluences which  have  already  been  briefly  indicated.  They 
are  characterized  by  natural  esprit  de  corps.  The  family 
esprit  de  corps  has  such  a  firm  root  in  the  breast  of  the 
individual  that  family  action  is  as  necessary  to  him  as 
action  in  his  own  private  interest.  The  naturalness  of 
such  action  from  family  esprit  de  corps  is  seen  in  the 
powerful  place  it  has  in  animal  life. 

The  natural  sanctions  extend,  however,  beyond  the 
family.  The  influence  of  kinship  may  be  traced  out  into 
all  the  ramifications  of  blood-relationship.  Not  only  so, 
but  a  similar  natural  bond,  which  the  historians  of  society 
trace  back  to  the  family,  extends  to  the  various  natural 
aggregations  into  which  the  social  body  falls  at  different 
periods  in  its  development  from  the  family  to  the  village 
community,  then  through  the  various  stages  of  tribal  and 
patriarchal  organization.  This  we  need  not  dwell  upon. 
Nor  is  it  necessary  to  follow  the  development  through  the 
more  enlightened  periods  for  which  we  have  the  historical 
records  —  from  the  feudal  in  Europe,  the  civic  unit  in 
Greece,  and  the  other  forms  of  restricted  communal 
organization  all  based  upon  the  natural  bond,  up  into  the 
forms  of  higher  political  and  social  institutions.  This 
esprit  de  corps  shows  itself  also  sentimentally  in  patriotism, 
race  feeling,  colour  prejudice,  etc. 

Students  of  philosophy,  also,  need  not  to  be  reminded 
that  the  race  was  many  ages  getting  its  concept  of  uni- 
versal brotherhood.  The  distinction  of  Jew  and  Gentile, 
bond  and  free,  Greek  and  Barbarian,  in  its  innumerable 
forms,  is  not  yet  entirely  obsolete  in  the  popular  mind. 
National  spirit  is  only  a  form  of  natural  esprit  de  c.orps. 


408     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

Each  successive  widening  of  the  bond  only  serves  to  show 
its  reality.  The  family  bond  remains,  although  the  family 
relationship  is  no  longer  massgebend  for  all  social  organiza- 
tion, nor  prohibitory  of  wider  social  attachments.  Civic 
pride,  which  in  our  modern  life  is  near  to  family  pride, 
yet  allows  the  wider  forms  of  natural  organization  to  per- 
fect themselves  beside  it.  National  life,  with  all  its  fly- 
ing of  flags  and  blowing  of  horns,  nevertheless  does  not 
supersede  the  family  nor  the  city  attachments;  nor  does  it 
altogether  deaden  that  most  sublime  of  all  the  natural  senti- 
ments,—  the  sentiment  of  humanity  and  universal  brother- 
hood. So  not  only  has  this  natural  social  sanction  had  its 
history ;  it  has  become  more  varied  and  influential  the  far- 
ther down  in  history  we  trace  the  evolution  of  humanity. 

265.  It  is  only  a  step  further  to  recognize  the  forms 
of  sanction  which  the  natural  esprit  dc  corps  of  man  brings 
to  the  life  of  the  individual,  reflecting  themselves  in  his 
conduct  as  immediate  reasons  for  his  action.  They  are 
generally  unconscious  or  subconscious.  We  do  not  hear 
a  man  questioning  with  himself  as  to  whether  he  shall 
expose  himself  to  the  weather  for  his  child,  nor  whether 
he  shall  go  out  to  defend  his  city.  The  school  hero  whom 
we  had  occasion  to  cite  before  does  not  ask  the  question 
which  school  —  his  own  or  the  one  around  the  corner  — 
is  more  worthy  of  his  devotion  and  of  his  fists.  And  hav- 
ing settled  that  point  on  more  direct  grounds  than  argu- 
ment, he  does  not  fall  to  arguing  before  he  pitches  into 
the  town  boy  who  reviles  the  school  which  he  himself  has 
just  before  attacked.  So  it  is  in  the  larger  affairs  of  the 
adult,  who  fights  for  country  when  country  is  attacked;  for 
race  when  race  questions  succeed  those  of  country ;  for 
family  when  its  honour  is  impugned ;  for  himself  when 


The  Natural  Sanctions  409 

his  brother  treads  upon  his  rights.  He  does  it  all  with 
the  spontaneity  which  shows  the  action  in  each  case  to 
be  natural  in  the  most  intimate  sense  of  the  word.  Its 
naturalness  is  its  justification.  To  say  that  he  has  no 
justification  is  to  say  that  things  which  are  not  natural 
to  him  might  yet  come  to  him  with  a  stronger  appeal. 
The  only  solution  in  such  a  case  is  the  solution  of  a  conflict 
of  sanctions  —  a  condition  which  is  common  enough. 

But  admitting  that  men  do  act  on  these  direct  natural 
sanctions,  the  important  further  question  then  is :  what 
relation  does  this  social  or  public  sanction  have  to  his  own 
private  sanctions,  those  which  we  have  been  pointing  out 
in  the  preceding  chapter?  This  question  introduces  us 
to  the  line  of  inquiries  which  bring  in  a  contrast  between 
the  sanctions  and  actions  upon  sanctions  of  the  individual's 
own  nature  and  those  of  society ;  a  topic  which  serves 
to  focus  the  main  theoretical  positions  of  the  earlier  chap- 
ters. I  shall,  therefore,  take  it  up  here,  and  also  again 
in  connection  with  each  of  the  sorts  of  social  sanction 
which  we  have  to  consider. 

266.  What  relation,  then,  exists  between  the  natural 
sanctions  for  actions  done  from  family  and  other  forms 
of  esprit  de  corps,  and  the  private  sanctions  which  the 
individual  has  for  his  personal  acts  ?  Evidently  these  are 
not  two  classes,  but  one.  It  is  clear  that  in  actions  done 
from  natural  esprit  de  corps,  the  individual  is  acting  simply 
and  only  from  impulse.  The  fact  that  he  does  not  reason, 
that  he  does  not  hesitate,  nor  ask  even  for  ethical  or  social 
justification  —  these  facts  show  that  he  is  now  in  the  region 
of  just  that  form  of  compulsion  which  we  called,  in  the 
consideration  of  his  impulses,  the  sanction  of  'necessity.' 
T9  be  sure,  the  arena  of  his  action  is  now  a  different  one ; 


4iQ     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

it  is  now  the  social  arena.  His  action  has  reference  to 
a  wider  circle,  —  family,  school,  league,  city,  state,  —  and 
he  is  conscious  of  this  reference.  The  content  of  his 
consciousness  is  different,  for  his  mind  is  filled  up  with 
the  being  or  beings  for  whom  he  is  acting.  But  that 
does  not  alter  the  fact  that  the  sanction  is  simply  that 
of  impulse.  To  make  it  anything  else  is  to  say  that  he 
appeals  to  other  sources  of  influence  for  his  reasons ; 
and  it  is  quite  impossible  to  point  out  any  other  sources. 
When  we  ask  him  why  he  fights  for  his  brother,  he  re- 
plies simply,  as  was  said  above,  '  because  he  is  my 
brother.'  He  cannot  tell  you  by  what  law  a  man  should 
defend  his  brother.  He  may  be  quite  willing,  indeed,  to 
confess  that  his  brother  is,  from  the  point  of  view  of  reason- 
able desert  and  ethical  worth,  quite  unworthy  of  his  pains; 
but  then  —  he  still  fights  for  his  brother  !  The  sanctions 
drawn  from  more  remote  social  regions  or  from  the  re- 
gions of  his  own  higher  social  and  ethical  nature  simply 
fail  of  application.  He  acts  because  he  must,  and  there 
he  stands,  saying  with  that  devotion  to  his  personal  nature 
which  Luther  put  in  words  for  all  time :  '  I  can  do  no 
otherwise.' 

We  have  seen  reasons,  in  our  study,  for  the  coincidence 
between  this  form  of  social  sanction  and  that  of  the 
individual's  impulsive  nature.  The  instincts  of  natural 
affection,  of  natural  esprit  de  corps,  are  engrained  in  the 
very  nervous  organization  of  man.  They  stand  on  the 
basis  of  private  possessions  to  him,  much  as  his  more 
self-seeking  and  defensive  reactions  do.  Their  relation 
to  the  other  and,  in  many  ways,  higher  influences  of  life 
are  just  those  which  subsist  between  all  his  impulses 
and  his  higher  sanctions,  —  the  relation  spoken  of  above, 


The  Natural  Sanctions  4 1  j 

where  something  was  said  of  the  interaction  between  the 
different  forms  of  personal  sanction. 

The  conclusion,  then,  to  which  we  come  in  reference  to 
the  relation  between  natural  social  sanctions  and  personal 
sanctions  is  this :  that  the  former  are  identical  with  the 
sanction  of  necessity  in  the  personal  sphere.  There  are 
not  two  spheres  of  personal  action  in  this  realm  of  spon- 
taneous conduct,  one  private  and  the  other  social ;  the 
antithesis  is  a  false  one ;  there  is  only  one  sphere,  that  of 
the  sanction  of  necessity.  The  social  reference  of  the 
action  is  as  natural  to  the  individual  as  are  his  private 
references;  and  the  sanction  is  one. 

267.  A  case  illustrating  the  extreme  force  of  these 
natural  sanctions  —  perhaps  the  most  striking  case  —  is 
found  in  the  care  taken  by  parents  for  the  next  genera- 
tion. "  Why  is  it,"  we  are  asked,  "  that  a  man  will  sub- 
mit to  all  sorts  of  social  restrictions,  will  work  his  fingers 
to  the  bone,  will  deny  himself  comforts  and  necessities, 
that  he  may  lay  by  money  for  his  children  ? "  It  is  not 
the  sanction  merely  of  personal  success  or  happiness  that 
prompts  him,  for  that  would  lead  him  to  calculate  the 
chances  on  the  basis  of  reflective  egoism,  in  most  or  all 
cases,  and,  if  carried  to  an  extreme,  lead  to  the  neglect  of 
his  children  —  or  to  the  suppression  of  the  family  instinct, 
that  there  might  be  no  next  generation  at  all.  But  we 
do  not  find  men  acting  commonly  in  that  way.  The  sanc- 
tion of  the  impulsive  nature  comes  in  first  to  decree  other- 
wise. The  denial  of  that  would,  as  the  event  shows,  be 
to  most  men  harder  and  lead  to  more  distressing  conse- 
quences —  especially  when  we  come  to  see  that  the  family 
instincts  are  immensely  reinforced  from  the  social  im- 
pulses as  well  —  than  the  gratification  of  it. 


412     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

Nor  can  it  be  called  unreasonable  to  indulge  it.  The 
sanction  even  of  intelligence  is  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
necessarily  on  the  side  of  egoism ;  this  we  have  already 
seen.  Purely  selfish  and  egoistic  action  is  the  exception ; 
and  considering  the  entire  equipment  of  the  average  man, 
*'/  is  unreasonable.  On  the  contrary,  the  intelligence  comes 
to  ally  itself  normally  with  the  impulses  of  social  and 
family  life. 

The  care  of  children,  with  all  the  social  consequences 
which  it  entails,  is  as  deep-seated  as  the  impulse  to  think.1 
The  measure  of  intelligence,  in  these  matters,  is  seen  in 
the  degree  to  which  the  self  which  is  identified  with  the 
end  of  desire  and  choice  is  the  full  self,  with  all  its  normal 
springs  of  action.2  It  is  intelligent  to  act  for  this  self ;  and 
this  self  is  also,  as  these  social  impulses  show,  in  great 
measure  such  a  social  self  as  is  the  father  of  children. 


1  Phylogenetically,  of  course,  it  is  more  so. 

2  See  Chap.  IX.,  §§  3,  5.     The  claim  (cf.  Kidd,  Social  Evolution)  that 
action  for  posterity  has  no  '  rational  sanction  '  contains  a  further  confusion 
arising  from  the  failure  to  distinguish  betsveen  the  '  philosophical '   and  the 
'  subjective '   ends  attributed  alternatively  to  the  actor.     To  the   utilitarian 
or  hedonistic  theorist  the  gain  would  be  on  the  side  of  the  suppression  of  the 
sexual  instinct,  for  example:  philosophically  that  would  be  'rational';   but  to 
the  actor,  himself,  the  only  real  end  present  before  him  is  the  psychological 
end  which  the  instinct  itself  brings  up.     If  he  has  no  other  strongly  impelling 
end  in  consciousness,  how  could  he  'rationally'  adopt  any  other?     The  only 
practical  result  from  his  considering  family  life  irrational  —  in  case  he  adopts 
the  philosophical  or  the  hedonistic  sanction  —  arises  from  the  possibility  of 
his  adopting  preventive  measures  before  the  natural  sanctions  arise  in  force; 
that  of  taking  occasion,  while  he  is  not  socially  moved,  to  provide  for  his  own 
'  rationality '  when  his  social  movings  come  on.     There  must  be  something  of 
this  kind  at  work  in  what  we  may  call  the  diminishing  family  returns  among 
the  higher  classes,  and  in  France  notably  among  the  people,  as  statistics  re- 
port.    It  seems  to  be  due  to  a  mixture  of  pessimistic   social  philosophy  with 
practical  hedonism;   a  combination  of  sanctions  which  being  possible  in  indi- 
viduals would,  in  the  case  of  such  a  question,  have  direct  results  upon  society. 


The  Pedagogical  and  Conventional  Sanctions    413 

When,  indeed,  the  thought  of  self  has  once  become  ethi- 
cal, the  extreme  egoistic  reference  of  the  intelligence  is 
normally  inhibited  in  this  sphere  as  in  others. 


§  2.    The  Pedagogical  and  Conventional  Sanctions 

268.  The  second  class  of  social  institutions  which  claim 
our  attention  are  those  which  we  may  describe  as  peda- 
gogical, in  the  broadest  sense.  The  word  has  reference 
to  the  training  of  the  individual  member  of  society  for  his 
place  and  activities  in  life.  It  is  evident,  from  a  survey  of 
society,  that  such  institutions  play  an  important  place  in 
the  social  economy,  that  they  bring  a  most  important 
series  of  sanctions  to  bear  upon  every  sane  member  of 
the  community. 

With  these  go  also  the  '  conventional '  institutions,  by 
which  I  mean  those  which  owe  their  continuance  to  pub- 
lic opinion,  economic  and  industrial  necessities,  etc.,  stop- 
ping short  of  the  legal  and  civil,  which  have  executive 
agencies  to  enforce  their  enactments. 

No  detail  of  the  institutions  of  education  or  convention 
is  necessary  here,  since  the  sanctions  which  they  bring 
are  the  same  in  kind,  whatever  be  the  varieties  of  organi- 
zation which  they  show.  The  school,  the  university,  the 
apprentice's  bench,  the  clerk's  desk,  the  business  rule, 
all  require  the  individual  to  submit  to  certain  regulations, 
both  positive  and  negative  in  nature,  which  are  vital 
to  his  success  in  becoming  an  effective  member  of  so- 
ciety, in  the  way  which  his  choice  of  life-conditions  pre- 
scribes. These  ways,  in  which  the  fact  of  having  to 
learn  in  order  to  act  comes  to  set  the  reasons  for  the 
actual  course  which  the  person  pursues,  are  the  essential 


414     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

considerations  to  us  now ;  and  the  '  reasons '  themselves 
are  social  sanctions. 

269.  For  preliminary  purposes,  we  may  contrast  the 
cases  of  action  from  these  influences  into  two  great 
classes :  the  actions  of  submission  to  regulations  to  which 
the  person  is  compelled  to  submit,  on  the  one  hand ;  and 
those,  on  the  other  hand,  to  which  he  voluntarily  or  spon- 
taneously submits.  The  latter  class,  it  is  evident,  will 
include  many  sorts  of  restraint,  discipline,  etc.,  to  which 
it  is  necessary  that  he  should  submit ;  but  the  fact  that  he 
chooses  to  do  so  voluntarily  suffices  to  throw  them  into 
the  second  class  mentioned.1 

First,  as  to  the  influences  of  an  educational  kind  —  in 
the  broadest  sense — to  which  the  individual  social  learner 
bows  his  head  submissively  that  he  may  learn.  These 
actions  evidently  belong  to  the  pedagogical  discipline, 
which  comes  rather  late  in  life,  when  the  student  or 
social  actor  has  free  choice  of  the  course  he  intends  to 
pursue,  and  of  the  means,  degree  of  excellence,  etc., 
which  appear  to  him  good.  The  reason  that  we  find  it 
well  to  throw  all  these  influences  together  for  remark,  is 
that  they  are  not  in  any  sense  peculiarly  social  influences 
after  the  individual  has  once  made  them  personal  to  him- 
self by  choosing  them.  This  is  the  more  evident  when 
we  throw  the  consideration  of  them  on  the  side  of  sanc- 
tion. The  sanction  becomes  at  once  personal,  in  becom- 
ing the  conscious  reason  on  which  the  individual  acts, 
although  they  remain  also  social.  They  are  always 
social,  since  they  are  the  prescriptions  which  society 

1  Many  of  the  regulations  to  which  he  is  compelled  to  submit  fall  under  the 
class  of '  civil  sanctions'  (see  Sect.  275),  a  class  which  cannot  be  separated  by 
any  strict  division  from  the  present,  as  the  final  result  will  show. 


The  'Pedagogical  and  Conventional  Sanctions    415 

makes  for  success  in  this  or  that  career.  But  it  is  not  as 
social  prescriptions  that  the  individual  pursues  them ;  nor 
are  the  sanctions  which  society  brings  to  bear  on  him 
operative  only  because  they  are  prescriptions  of  society. 
By  making  choice  of  this  line  or  act  of  conduct,  he  sets 
them  up  in  his  own  mind  as  objects  of  desire;  and  thus 
makes  himself,  in  these  particular  spheres  of  action, 
liable  to  the  personal  sanction  of  desire. 

The  consideration  already  given  in  the  earlier  section 
(Chap.  IX.,  §  3)  to  the  sanction  of  desire,  therefore,  covers 
this  case  also.  And  we  may  at  once  say  that,  as  for  the 
social  prescriptions  of  a  pedagogical  or  conventional  kind, 
which  the  individual  voluntarily  embraces  as  objects  of 
desire,  they  are  without  further  change  personal  prescrip- 
tions, and  so  have  his  personal  sanction.  Any  antithesis 
between  the  social  and  the  individual  in  regard  to  these 
influences,  and  the  actions  to  which  they  lead,  is  ip so  facto 
impossible. 

270.  Passing,  then,  to  certain  remaining  pedagogical 
influences,  —  those  to  which  the  individual  submits  by 
example  or  by  suggestion,  without  choice  or  without 
knowing  that  he  is  under  them,  —  we  have  to  inquire 
into  the  kinds  of  sanction  which  they  bring,  and  the  re- 
lation of  these  to  his  personal  ones.  It  may  be  well 
to  indicate  the  fact  that  this  class  and  the  foregoing  are 
not  mutually  exclusive  in  their  actual  range  with  different 
individuals,  or  even  in  the  case  of  a  single  individual. 
The  same  social  prescriptions  may  be  accepted  voluntarily 
by  one  man,  and  rejected  by  another;  such  cases  are 
common  enough.  And  the  same  prescription  may  be 
now  accepted  and  now  rejected  by  the  same  man.  In 
disposing,  therefore,  of  the  class  of  cases  already  spoken 


4i 6     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

of,  we  have  not  settled  the  place  of  any  particular  social 
regulation ;  we  have  merely  found  that,  in  all  cases  of  a 
certain  conscious  attitude,  on  the  part  of  the  actor,  toward 
a  regulation  of  whatever  kind,  his  sanction  is  then  deter- 
mined by  his  attitude. 

In  this  second  case — that  is,  in  cases  in  which  this  atti- 
tude is  absent  —  we  have  a  series  of  interesting  instances. 
All  the  phenomena  of  social  heredity,  already  spoken  of  in 
detail,  come  in  here ;  phenomena  which  show  the  child  or 
adult  absorbing  without  effort  or  explicit  choice  the  details 
of  his  social  birthright,  from  the  earliest  lessons  in  deport- 
ment to  the  last  imitative  responses  which  he  makes  to  the 
'copies'  in  style,  dress,  opinion,  etc.,  of  those  about  him, 
and  in  all  the  larger  spheres  of  literature,  art,  political 
opinion,  humane  and  philanthropic  sentiment,  and  general 
social  conformity.  What  are  the  sanctions  for  these  per- 
formances ? 

271.  There  are  two  general  concepts  which  have  about 
equal  application  to  these  phenomena ;  both  concepts  with 
which  we  are  now  fairly  familiar.  These  instances  of 
action  seem  to  get  their  sanction  about  equally  from  the 
individual's  'social  emotion  as  such'  —  as  we  have  found 
it  well  to  call  it  (Chap.  VI.,  §  4)  —  on  the  one  hand, 
and  from  his  sensitiveness  to  '  public  opinion '  on  the 
other  hand. 

By  '  social  emotion  as  such,'  it  will  be  remembered,  we 
understood  the  phenomena  of  collective  action,  contagion 
of  feeling,  mob-influence,  etc.,  which  is  a  favourite  topic  just 
now  with  psychologically  inclined  writers  on  social  themes. 
Our  earlier  examination  of  the  phenomena  enables  us  to 
give  these  factors  of  collective  action  their'  right  place 
with  reference  to  the  individual.  We  came  to  the  con- 


The  Pedagogical  and  Conventional  Sanctions    417 

elusion  that  the  phenomena  are  only  exaggerated  instances 
of  the  gregarious  tendency  or  impulse,  upon  which  all  social 
life  rests,  and  consequently  that  they  arise  through  the  imi- 
tative relation.  This  is  the  type  of  function  to  which  all 
these  tendencies  may  be  reduced.1  The  whole  growth  of 
the  individual,  both  in  his  instruction  and  in  his  inven- 
tion, proceeds  by  imitation.  It  is  the  law  of  his  acquisi- 
tion. The  socially  characteristic  attitude  in  man  must, 
whatever  else  it  include,  include  the  impulse  or  instinct 
to  imitate.  Once  give  this  impulse  a  chance  to  operate 
without  restraint  or  with  encouragement  in  a  group  of 
men,  and  free  action  of  the  collective  or  co-operative  type 
results. 

Besides  the  opportunities  to  show  itself  afforded  to  this 
impulse  by  collective  suggestion,  — the  extreme  case  being 
mob-action,  —  the  sphere  of  education  gives  it  all  the  while 
its  chance  to  get  in  its  work.  In  education,  not  only  is 
imitation  not  restrained ;  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  constantly 
appealed  to  and  encouraged.  The  child  that  does  not 
imitate  does  not  learn.  It  is  only  a  short  step,  therefore, 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  individual's  reason  for  acting  in 
accordance  with  the  educational  and  conventional  prescrip- 
tions is  simply  that  he  feels  moved  to  imitate  spontaneously 
whenever  he  can ;  and  his  reason,  that  is  his  sanction. 

272.  The  same  follows,  also,  from  the  analysis  of  the 
individual's  process  of  conceiving  himself.  It  would  be 
trite  to  repeat  that  the  sense  of  self  grows  by  constant 
absorption  from  the  personality  suggestions  thrown  in 
the  way  of  the  child  by  his  social  fellows.  He  must 
learn  of  his  fellows  if  he  would  grow  in  knowledge  of  him- 
self. But  the  only  way  that  he  can  learn  of  his  fellows  is 

1  See  also  below,  Chap.  XII.,  §  4. 
2E 


4i 8     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

by  doing  what  they  do,  so  as  to  fed  as  they  feel  and  know 
what  they  know.  Again,  the  only  way  —  after  he  has  made 
his  imitative  interpretations  in  his  own  self-thought  —  that 
he  can  enrich  the  personalities  of  others  with  the  same 
attributes,  is  to  read  back  imitatively  into  them  the  things 
he  knows  about  himself.  The  point  of  value  to  us  now 
is  this :  that  both  of  these  are  imitative  processes.  They 
proceed  by  imitative  steps ;  and  the  real  sanction  that  the 
child  or  man  has  for  all  the  acts  of  general  social  con- 
formity, represented  by  his  personal  emotions  and  atti- 
tudes, is  the  sanction  which  his  imitation  expresses. 

Imitation,  however,  is  an  impulsive  and  spontaneous 
thing.  In  all  the  forms  of  action  to  which  it  gives  rise 
it  falls  under  the  head  of  impulse,  and  so  has  the  sanction 
that  impulse  in  general  has :  the  sanction  of  psychologi- 
cal necessity.1  We  reach  the  conclusion,  therefore,  that 
the  sanction  of  all  those  elements  of  action,  in  the 
pedagogical  realm,  which  spring  from  the  spontaneous 
conformities  of  the  individual  to  the  imitative  lessons 
of  the  social  body  —  the  sanction  of  all  these  actions  is 
necessity ;  and  we  come  round  again  to  the  personal  type 
of  sanction. 

273.  The  same  reduction  to  the  personal  sanction  holds 
also,  it  is  just  as  well  to  say  at  once,  of  the  other  ingre- 
dient in  these  acts  of  educational  and  conventional  con- 
formity :  the  element  spoken  of  above  as  the  influence  of 
public  opinion.  This  has  already  been  described  and 
treated  in  connection  with  social  and  ethical  sentiment.2 

1  Where  it  becomes  voluntary,  as  in  '  persistent '  imitation  and  volition,  it 
falls  under  the  foregoing  head,  i.e.,  under  action  having  the  personal  sanction 
of  desire. 

'Chap.  VIII.,  §§  2,3. 


The  Pedagogical  and  Conventional  Sanctions    419 

The  word  '  publicity '  has  been  used  to  describe  the  social 
reference  which  characterizes  ethical  actions.  Its  place 
in  the  growth  of  the  ethical  and  social  sense  has  been 
indicated ;  and  we  have  only  to  recall  the  position  which 
the  alter  thought  holds  in  all  the  personal  development 
of  a  man,  to  see  that  public  opinion  gets  its  sanction  not 
from  the  fact  that  it  is  public  (in  an  objective  sense,  as 
common  or  open  to  all  men),  but  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
privately  conceived  to  be  public  (has  publicity  ascribed  to 
it  in  the  individual's  private  thought).  All  social  know- 
ledge must  have  both  public  and  private  value  to  me,  if  it 
is  to  have  any  influence  on  my  actions  in  the  way  of  giving 
them  sanction.  The  private  aspect  then  makes  the  sanc- 
tion personal. 

To  make  this  plain,  we  may  recall  the  truths  that  even 
in  the  spontaneous  period  of  action  the  child  cannot  treat 
others  with  the  deference  due  to  personality  —  the  defer- 
ence due  to  their  opinion,  his  public's  opinion  —  without 
taking  the  personal  attitudes  which  make  the  thought  of 
the  alter,  of  the  public,  also  the  thought  of  himself.  His 
thought  of  an  act,  as  good,  or  sanctioned,  for  them  to 
perform,  is  necessarily  the  thought  of  it  as  also  good, 
sanctioned,  for  him  to  perform.  It  is  good  to  perform, 
that  is  as  far  as  he  goes ;  and  it  is  a  matter  of  indifference 
whether  the  performer  be  he  or  they.  This  follows  from 
the  oneness  of  the  sense  of  self. 

When  we  track  the  matter  of  public  opinion  into  the 
intellectual  period,  we  find  it  possible  again  to  utilize  at 
once  our  earlier  results.  The  sense  of  public  opinion 
may  be  distinguished  from  the  simple  fact  of  public  opin- 
ion. Public  opinion  may  influence  a  man's  intellectual 
processes,  although  he  may  not  be  thinking  with  refer- 


420    His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

ence  to  public  opinion,  nor  even  know  that  it  is  influ- 
encing him.  Each  such  case  is  one  or  other  of  those  just 
considered  :  either  a  case  of  unconscious  social  conformity 
by  imitation,  so  falling  under  the  sanction  of  impulse,  or 
a  case  of  social  and  ethical  judgment  and  sentiment  which 
falls  under  the  sanction  of  desire. 

But  the  man  may  act  with  explicit  reference  to  public 
opinion  in  one  or  more  of  certain  other  ways  which  we 
have  come  to  recognize.  Either  he  acts  with  a  view  to 
changing,  appeasing,  persuading,  his  fellow-men,  —  in 
which  case  his  action  has  again  the  personal  sanction 
of  desire,  —  or  he  acts  from  the  vantage-ground  of  more 
or  less  adequate  knowledge  of  others'  approval  or  con- 
demnation. This  latter  case  proceeds  upon  the  analysis 
just  made  above,  where  we  found  that  his  sense  of  another's 
judgment  involved  himself,  as  passing  the  same  judgment 
through  the  reciprocity  of  the  relation  of  the  ego  and  alter 
personalities.  This  makes  the  sanction,  now  ethical,  a 
personal  one.  We  come  upon  it  again  later,  in  considering 
the  more  ethical  influences  which  society  exerts  upon  the 
individual. 

Or  yet  again,  the  man  may  act  with  a  view  to  utilizing 
public  opinion,  or  some  other  form  of  social  influence,  for 
some  indirect  personal  end,  —  a  process  which  we  have 
described  at  some  length  as  characterizing  the  child's 
advent  into  the  intelligent  period.  This,  it  is  clear,  brings 
the  influence  of  public  opinion  out  of  the  social  sphere  alto- 
gether into  that  of  private  ends ;  and  makes  the  sanction 
again  clearly  one  of  desire. 

So  we  have  to  conclude  that  the  influence  of  public 
opinion  is  exerted  entirely  through  sanctions  private  to 
the  individual  in  the  first  instance,  however  common  they 


The  Civil  Sanctions  421 

may  be  to  different  individuals;  and  that,  in  this  realm, 
the  antithesis  between  personal  and  social  sanctions  is 
again  false,  since  there  are  no  exclusively  social  sanctions 
as  such. 

274.  There  remains  only  one  other  aspect  of  the  peda- 
gogical problem  which  bears  upon  this  matter  of  sanction : 
that  of   the  compulsory  social   conformities.      There  are 
certain  things  which  the  child  and  the  adult  must  learn 
in  order  to  live  socially ;    just  as  there   are   some  things 
which  he  must  do  —  certain  duties  to  society  —  in  order  to 
live.     The  things  of  his  learning,  however,  fall  really  in 
the  other  category,  that  of  doing.     Learning  is  a  thing 
that  he  must  do.     And  as  the  sanctions  of  our  next  cate- 
gory, called  the  '  civil '  sanctions,  take  cognizance  of  these 
cases  of  doing  in  the  compulsory  meaning  of   the  term, 
this  sort  of  learning  may  be  brought  up  again  under  that 
head. 

§  3.    The  Civil  Sanctions 

275.  We  come  now  to  consider  those  great  institutions 
of  social  life  which  exist  from  generation  to  generation  as 
monuments  to  what  is  most  human :    institutions  of  gov- 
ernment, law,  justice,  etc.     It  is  evident,  of  course,  that 
we  cannot  attempt  within  the  limits  of  the  present  essay 

—  even  if  we  were  prepared  to  do  so  —  to  develop  a 
philosophy  of  these  great  permanent  social  and  political 
institutions.  The  very  classification  of  them  together  in 
the  scheme  of  treatment  now  proposed  shows  that  it  is 
only  a  single  aspect  of  them  which  is  to  be  brought 
forward.  That  aspect  is  their  sanction  aspect,  so  to  speak. 
And  the  justification  of  the  grouping  together  of  things 
otherwise  so  disparate  is  here.  I  mean  to  say  that  the 


422    His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

sphere  of  all  those  institutions  of  a  social  kind  to  which 
the  individual  must  submit  as  a  good  citizen  —  and  to 
which  he  must  still  submit  in  a  more  imperative  sense  if 
he  be  a  bad  citizen  —  is  the  same  from  the  point  of  view 
of  their  sanction,  which  we  may  call  the  '  civil  sanction.' 

The  question  which  comes  before  us,  therefore,  in  this 
connection  concerns  the  nature  of  this  civil  sanction.  Do 
we  find  here,  in  the  things  which  society  and  its  institu- 
tions require  of  the  individual  man,  a  reason  or  sanction  for 
action  which  is  distinctively  social,  that  is,  a  sanction  for 
which  the  individual  has  no  equivalent  in  his  own  nature 
as  a  personal  actor  ? 

276.  At  first  sight,  it  looks  as  though  we  should  have 
to  answer  this  question  in  the  affirmative.  And  those 
who  are  familiar  with  the  socialistic  literature  of  the  pres- 
ent day  will  see  that  the  affirmative  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion is  the  first  and  unanimous  assumption  of  modern 
socialism.  It  is,  of  course,  characteristic  of  the  nihilistic 
and  anarchistic  positions  to  claim  that  society  represents 
in  its  great  institutions  of  law,  justice,  vested  property, 
etc.,  a  great  power  which  is  enforcing  its  regulations  upon 
the  individual  against  his  will,  and,  in  many  cases,  against 
his  reason  and  judgment.  It  is  as  well  to  recognize  the 
extreme  form  of  this  doctrine  in  order  to  trace  it  also  in 
the  milder  forms  in  which  it  presents  itself  in  socialism. 
The  socialistic  propaganda  to-day  seems  to  me  to  get  its 
strength  from  two  elements  in  its  teaching :  first,  its  real 
return  to  individualism  :  that  is,  its  full  recognition  of  the 
autonomy  of  the  individual,  acting  under  the  personal 
form  of  sanction ;  and  second,  its  supposition  of  a  real 
antithesis  between  the  interests  and  sanctions  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  those  of  the  social  group  as  society  is  at 


The  Civil  Sanctions  423 

present  constituted.  The  first  of  these  elements  is  seen 
in  the  assumption  that  the  individual  is  capable  of  gov- 
erning himself  without  the  compulsory  machinery  by 
which  society  administers  the  accumulated  and  still  de- 
veloping wisdom  of  the  ages.  This  position,  of  course, 
opens  the  socialist  doctrine  to  the  criticism  that  the  indi- 
vidual is  a  very  poor  creature  after  all,  and  to  trust  him  to 
do  better,  after  he  has  undone  the  work  of  the  past,  is  not 
convenient.  Yet  I  do  not  care  to  discuss  this  question, 
since  it  is  the  other  element  of  the  socialistic  position 
which  principally  concerns  us. 

This  other  element  —  the  assumption  that  there  is  a 
real  antithesis  between  the  demands  made  upon  a  man  by 
the  civil  order  of  the  time  and  the  demands  of  his  own 
nature  —  seems  to  me  to  be  present  in  all  this  modern 
development.  And  there  must  be  in  some  sense  a  real 
antithesis  here,  since  these  writers  seem  to  illustrate  such 
an  antithesis  in  their  own  personal  attitude.1 

The  relations  of  the  individual  to  his  social  environment 
are  such,  however,  that  we  are  led  to  make  two  state- 
ments, under  which  we  should  expect  the  different  aspects 
of  the  case  to  fall,  if  our  previous  discussions  have  brought 
us  to  correct  views.  These  we  may  state  and  then  de- 
velop, in  view  of  the  asserted  antithesis  between  the  two 
factors. 


1  It  should  be  said,  in  order  not  to  be  unjust,  that  the  socialistic  ideal 
involves  only  the  first  assumption  :  that  of  complete  harmony  between  the 
individual  in  society  and  the  central  bureau  by  which  he  would  allow  the 
collective  affairs  to  be  administered.  But  it  is  just  this  assumption  which  his 
practical  attitude  toward  civil  institutions  seems  to  contradict.  Such  an  ideal 
could  be  approached  only  by  some  show  of  harmonious  action  on  the  part  of 
the  two  interests,  through  which  society  and  the  individual  might  grow  together 
toward  their  common  goal. 


424    His  Social  Sanctions :  Sofia/  Opposition 

I.  We  find  reason  for  distinguishing  between  the  average 
man  and  the  exceptional  man  ;  the  man  socially  normal  on 
the  one  hand ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  man  socially 
remarkable,  such  as  the  genius  at  one  extreme  of  mental 
variation  and   the  mentally  defective  at  the  other. 

II.  The  antithesis  between  the  sanctions  of  the  civil 
and  those  of  a  personal  kind  arise  only  to  the  exceptional 
man,  or  to  the  exceptional  judgments  of  the  average  man. 

277.  We  may  consider  first  the  '  average  man  '  with 
reference  to  both  of  these  statements,  dwelling  a  little 
on  the  first ;  for,  while  no  one  would  deny  that  there  are 
average  men  and  exceptional  men,  yet  the  sense  in  which 
it  is  to  be  enforced  below  requires  that  it  be  clearly  under- 
stood from  the  social  and  ethical  points  of  view. 

I.  The  socially  '  average '  man  is  the  man  who  passes 
normally  through  the  stages  of  social  learning  represented 
by  the  pedagogical  sanctions  already  spoken  of.  We  saw, 
in  asking  as  to  the  qualifications  of  the  candidate  for  the 
heritage  which  society  offers,  that  they  were  two :  he  must 
be  born  to  /earn,  and  all  must  be  born  to  learn  the  same 
things.1  Only  on  the  assumption  of  these  qualifications  in 
the  individuals  is  the  development  of  social  institutions  at 
all  possible.  For,  as  we  also  saw,  if  a  large  proportion 
of  the  young  of  any  generation  should  be  born  to  rebel 
against  the  pedagogical  sanctions  of  their  group,  or  with 
strains  of  heredity  which  make  it  impossible  for  them  to 
profit  by  the  teachings  of  society,  so  soon  must  society 
go  to  pieces ;  unless,  indeed,  it  have  some  resource  apart 
from  the  appeal  to  individuals  for  the  enforcement  of  the 
sanctions  which  its  organization  prescribes.  There  must 
always  be  an  average  person  who  represents  two  things : 

»  Chap.  II,  §  I. 


The  Civil  Sanctions  425 

first,  the  degree  of  social  hereditary  endowment  which 
normally  develops  in  the  channels  of  established  social 
usage  and  requirement;  and  second,  he  must  represent 
in  his  mature  opinions  the  usages,  sympathies,  and  formu- 
lated demands  of  social  conformity  as  such. 

This  latter  requirement  is  more  difficult  to  see,  but  it 
is  real.  The  development  of  the  ethical,  and  of  the  pecul- 
iarly social  sense  which  goes  with  the  ethical,  gives  that 
'  publicity '  to  the  ideal  judgments  of  the  individual  which, 
it  will  be  remembered,  means  that  the  public  knows  of  the 
private  act  and  agrees  with  the  private  agent  in  his  judg- 
ment of  it.  This  is  a  necessary  thing  in  all  the  maturer 
members  of  society.  The  decrees  of  society  get  their  pas- 
sage, in  the  first  instance,  only  through  the  recognition 
by  many  individuals  of  this  publicity  of  judgment  with 
the  objective  agreements  upon  which  it  rests.  They  then 
pass  into  legal  enactments  and  so  become  crystallized  in 
institutions.  But  back  of  them  there  still  remain,  and 
must  remain,  the  individuals  who  represent  just  the  aver- 
age social  attainment  embodied  in  the  public  civil"  enact- 
ments. 

In  these  individuals,  who  establish  the  social  level,  so 
to  speak,  society  finds  the  court  of  appeal ;  not  as  indi- 
viduals, but  as  the  standard  bearers,  in  their  collective  or 
public  capacity,  of  her  own  standards.  Of  course,  the 
two  qualifications  of  the  average  individual  are  not  dis- 
tinct ;  it  is  only  through  the  first  that  he  gets  the  second. 
Only  through  his  pedagogical  training  can  he  grow  into 
the  judgments,  sentiments,  etc.,  which  make  him  finally 
a  fit  bearer  of  the  public  standards  of  his  time.  And  the 
psychological  reader  will  see  the  meaning  of  it  all  in  the 
individual's  own  development.  It  is  the  essential  growth 


426     His  Social  Sanctions :  Social  Opposition 

of  his  personality  which  is  concerned  in  the  attaining  of 
social  conformity  of  personal  judgment,  in  the  first  in- 
stance ;  and  his  growth  into  that  '  publicity '  of  judgment, 
which  makes  him  at  once  a  loyal  supporter  of  the  social 
institutions  of  his  day  and  place,  is  an  equally  essential 
and  momentous  phase  of  his  personal  development. 

278.  II.  The  second  of  our  points  may  be  raised  in 
reference  to  this  average  man.  Can  there  be  an  antith- 
esis between  the  social  sanctions  under  which  his  life 
of  conformity  is  lived,  and  the  personal  sanctions  which 
his  own  nature  lays  down  ?  Is  it  possible  that  he  may 
conform  to  the  civil  enactments  of  his  country  and  time 
under  protest  of  his  personal  nature  ? 

We  have  in  this  matter  one  of  the  most  subtle  phases 
of  the  developed  social  consciousness,  and  we  may  not 
hope  to  say  anything  final.  I  think,  however,  that  the 
distinctions  now  made  serve  to  give  us  the  main  lines  of 
a  partial  answer.  The  distinction  between  the  normal 
and  the  exceptional  has  to  be  carried  further  in  two  ways. 

i.  First,  indivitjuals  vary  in  their  normal,  about  one  or 
other  of  the  personal  standards  of  sanction  which  all  have 
in  common.  We  have  already  remarked  that  some  prefer 
the  intellectual  sanction ;  in  them  it  rules  the  impulsive, 
and,  in  some  degree,  also  the  ethical.  Others,  on  the 
contrary,  naturally  live  lives  of  impulse ;  while  a  third 
class  exhibit  a  most  refined  ethical  sensitiveness. 

This  distinction  in  individuals  —  within  the  class  of  aver- 
age men  —  represents  one  possibility  of  a  conflict  between 
the  social  and  the  personal  sanctions ;  that  shown  by  the 
theorist  or  dissenter  as  such.  Here  is  the  man  who 
argues  about  society  on  the  basis  of  the  intellectual  sanc- 
tion alone.  The  majority  of  socialistic  writers  —to  take 


The  Civil  Sanctions  427 

one  case  only  —  seem  to  me  to  fall  here :  men  who  them- 
selves represent,  in  their  training,  the  average  which 
comes  from  a  life  of  normal  social  conformity,  and  who 
generally  represent  standard  judgments  also,  as  to  the 
usages  and  customs  of  society ;  but  who  proceed  to  reason 
beyond  these  standards  by  their  application  of  the  intel- 
lectual sanction  to  problems  which  do  not  permit  of  purely 
intellectual  solutions.  For  their  argumentation  does  vio- 
lence to  other  sanctions  which  are  still  in  force,  and  upon 
which  the  institutions  of  society  are  built. 

The  important  thing  to  be  noted  in  this  case  is  more 
than  the  antithesis  between  the  social  and  the  personal ;  it 
is  the  antithesis  between  the  two  sorts  of  personal  sanction. 
There  is  an  average  social  judgment,  but  it  is  unsupported 
by  the  intellect:  a  conflict  of  personal  sanctions  results. 
The  individual  theorist  gets  a  result  from  the  joint  action 
of  his  personal  sanctions,  different  from  that  which  the 
average  man  gets ;  an  adjustment  in  favour  of  new  intel- 
lectual conclusions,  with  their  social  corollaries.  This 
leads  him  to  raise  his  voice,  on  intellectual  grounds,  in 
opposition  to  the  existing  social  order ;  at  the  same  time 
that  his  personal  endorsement  of  the  social  sanctions 
keeps  him  within  the  sphere  of  practical  conformity. 

As  an  extreme  example  of  this  interesting  strife  of 
sanctions  we  find  the  anarchist.  Here  is  a  man  whose  in- 
tellectual, hedonic,  or  economic  sanctions  lead  him  into 
open  rebellion  against  the  social  order.  He  seems  to  me, 
however,  to  fall  outside  the  class  of  average  men,  since 
his  private  reproduction  of  current  social  sanctions  is  so 
inadequate. 

279.  2.  The  second  way  in  which  the  distinction  between 
the  average  and  the  exceptional  gets  application,  in  the 


428    His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

sphere  still  of  the  average  class,  is  in  the  judgments  of  the 
single  individual  himself.  The  average  man's  judgments 
vary  from  the  usual  to  the  exceptional.  Here  is  the  com- 
mon case  of  the  hobby.  Many  of  us  are  practically  insane 
on  some  one  topic.  Our  friends  grant  us  indulgence  when 
we  strike  our  hobby.  The  psychology  of  hobbies  is  well 
written ;  it  is  the  case  of  a  preferred  apperceptive  system 
grown  to  an  inordinate  size.  And  it  is  not  difficult  to  con- 
strue it  in  terms  of  the  play  of  sanctions.  A  man  may  see 
so  clearly  the  reasons  for  a  thing  —  be  they  personal, 
social,  intellectual,  ethical  —  that  he  allows  that  thing  to 
overshadow  in  his  mind  other  things  for  which  he  would 
also  see  the  sanction  if  he  once  gave  their  thought  a  chance.1 
And  inasmuch  as  these  other  things  do  get  a  chance  in 
the  minds  of  others,  and  perhaps  get  a  more  urgent  sanc- 
tion than  the  one  thing  upon  which  his  thought  dwells,  he 
comes  into  conflict  with  them  and  their  institutions.  The 
current  revolt  —  fortunately  largely  literary  and  theoretical 
—  against  marriage  is  a  capital  case  in  point.  The  senti- 
mental sanction  which  the  emotional  life  seems  sometimes 
to  give  to  the  violation  of  the  law  of  marriage  gets,  in  the 
mind  of  Mr.  Grant  Allen,  —  to  take  an  instance  of  one 
who,  by  publishing  his  opinions,  has  made  himself  fair  play 
for  criticism, — an  importance  which  justifies  a  revolt 
against  the  social  prescriptions  of  established  society.  The 
social  sanctions  for  marriage  seen  in  the  existence  and 
separate  life  of  the  family  —  with  all  that  this  means  to 
the  theory  of  social  sanctions,  especially  in  its  pedagogical 
and  ethical  aspects,  —  all  this  is  overweighed  in  the  mind 
of  such  a  writer,  we  may  suppose,  by  the  sanction  of  a 

1  Or  his  opinions  may  have  in  his  mind  the  '  sanction  pf  truth,'  which, 
however,  should  be  viewed  in  a  larger  whole  of  truth, 


The  Civil  Sanctions  429 

personal  kind  represented  by  the  opinion:  la  mariage, 
cest  r injustice.  But  this  is  not  primarily  an  antithesis 
between  social  and  personal  sanctions ;  it  is  rather  again 
a  controversy  among  different  sanctions  arising  about  a 
particular  problem,  in  the  mind  of  an  individual  who  is,  in 
other  respects,  a  man  of  conformity  to  the  judgments 
which  the  institutions  of  society  represent.  In  so  far  as  it 
does  come  to  the  test  of  argument  between  men,  it  fur- 
nishes a  case  of  the  opposition  between  the  intellectual 
and  the  social  sanctions,  to  be  spoken  of  again  below. 

There  is  here  also  a  form  of  conflict  which  takes  its  rise 
in  the  '  private  opposition '  of  the  individual,  whether  from 
contrary  suggestion,  exaggerated  self-competence,  or  mere 
love  of  social  contrast  between  himself  and  others ;  a  set 
of  phenomena  pointed  out  in  an  earlier  place.1  This  con- 
flict is  quite  on  the  plane  of  private  impulse,  except  in  so 
far  as  it  takes  on  intellectual  and  ethical  form.  The  sanc- 
tion for  such  actions  of  private  opposition  is,  therefore,  in 
any  case,  personal. 

280.  The  general  conclusion  already  intimated    seems 
just,  therefore,  that  so  far  as  the  average  man  is  concerned, 
his  sanctions  are  not  of  two  kinds,  one  set  social  and  the 
other  set  personal,  between  which  there  arises  chronic  or 
acute  opposition ;  but  on  the  contrary,  he  has  only  one  set 
of  sanctions,  those  which  he  regards  as  his  own.     The 
actual  oppositions  which  do  arise  in  his  life  and  opinion 
are  rather  apropos  of  questions  regarding  which  he  finds 
room  for  discussion,  and  for  the  more  thoroughgoing  appli- 
cation of  the  intellectual  sanction. 

281.  3.    Before  we  leave  the  consideration  of  the  aver- 
age man,  however,  a  single  further  point  may  be  indicated. 

i  Chap.  VI,  §  4. 


430     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

We  see  that,  so  far  from  finding  opposition  between  the 
social  requirements  of  life  and  his  personal  sanctions  for 
conduct,  his  tendency  is  quite  in  the  opposite  direction. 
As  a  general  thing,  he  lives  so  well  under  the  shadow  of 
the  social  roof,  that  a  certain  social  discount  is  put  upon 
originality  of  view,  and  more  still  upon  originality  of 
action.  The  average  man  is  reduced  to  the  size  of  the 
social  crevice  into  which  his  rearing  and  his  obedience 
have  thrust  him.  So  far  from  finding  it  a  trial  to  con- 
form to  society's  requirements,  he  finds  himself  in  tor- 
ment when  he  is  forced  out  of  them.  There  is  a  certain 
benumbing  effect  upon  the  individuals  in  this  social  rela- 
tionship ;  an  effect  which  is  conspicuous  in  the  type  of 
attitude  already  called  'conservatism.'  This  great  force  in 
society  becomes  crystallized  in  a  prevalent  spirit  of  con- 
ventional conformity  to  type,  and  a  certain  veneration  for 
age  and  rule  which  make  social  excellence  out  of  the 
average,  and  put  a  discount  on  progress.  If  further  evi- 
dence were  needed  to  prove  the  absence  of  opposition 
between  the  social  and  the  personal  sanction  in  general, 
and  in  the  average  man,  it  would  be  found  in  this  con- 
servatism. It  becomes  a  habit  of  mind.  It  makes  a 
virtue  of  dulness  and  a  vice  of  invention.  It  is  but 
another  case  of  that  tendency  of  which  we  have  seen 
several  examples  before,  —  the  general  tendency  to  social 
inertia  and  habit. 

It  is  largely  in  reference  to  this,  it  seems,  that  the 
intellectual  opposition  between  the  personal  and  the 
social,  as  just  pointed  out,  gets  its  development.  The 
oppositions  which  arise  through  the  use  of  intelligence 
upon  social  and  political  questions  is  first  of  all  joined 
in  an  issue  with  the  formulations  of  the  conservative 


The  Civil  Sanctions  431 

extreme.  And  many  of  the  oppositions  really  cease 
there.  The  opposition  is  very  sharp,  however,  in  many 
cases ;  and  it  is  often  in  the  intolerance  of  conservatism, 
with  its  social  tradition,  that  '  radicalism '  finds  its  oppor- 
tunity. I  do  not  mean  to  take  up  again1  these  two 
opposed  forces  in  social  and  political  life,  —  a  topic 
worthy,  however,  of  fuller  consideration,  —  but  only  to 
point  out  that  the  actual  opposition  of  the  acute  kind 
seen  in  political  strife,  and  in  the  many  controversies 
which  have  marked  the  path  of  human  progress  through 
the  ages,  has  had  much  of  its  motive  in  the  artificial 
intensity  of  these  two  habits  of  mind.  Real  as  may 
be  the  opposition  of  the  intelligence  and  its  sanctions 
to  the  established  forms  of  government,  religion,  and 
social  convention,  —  and  its  reality  is  of  the  first  im- 
portance for  the  life  and  progress  of  the  social  as  such 
when  the  intelligence  is  on  the  side  of  the  higher  and 
the  ethical,  —  yet  it  must  not  be  considered  as  finding  its 
true  measure  in  the  tide  of  passion  arrayed  on  the  side 
of  one  or  other  of  these  two  habitual  attitudes  of  mankind. 
282.  Coming  now  to  the  exceptional  men,  we  have  a 
very  different  state  of  things.  Men  may  be  social  ex- 
ceptions in  many  different  ways ;  and  possibly  the  best 
method  of  describing  some  of  them  —  as  well  as  the 
shortest  way  of  answering  our  question  in  reference  to 
them  —  is  by  looking  first  at  the  cases  for  which  society 
has  special  or  exceptional  forms  of  treatment.  It  would, 
of  course,  be  impossible  to  deny  opposition  between  the 
personal  and  the  social  sanctions  for  conduct  in  cases 
in  which  society  takes  direct  cognizance  of  just  this  op- 

1  Cf.  what  has  been  said  on  'conservatism'  and  '  liberalism,'  above,  Chap. 
V.,  §  3- 


432    His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

position.  The  treatment  may  be  brief,  however,  seeing 
that  some  of  these  social  variations  have  already  been 
mentioned.1  First  of  all,  there  are  the  defective  classes. 
These  do  not  recognize  the  regulations  of  society  simply 
because  they  cannot.  Their  presence  does  not  affect  the 
progress  of  society,  because  they  are  not  elements  in 
society  one  way  or  the  other.  They  are  a  problem  for 
society  to  use  its  wits  on,  that  it  may  carry  them  with  as 
little  loss  of  energy  as  possible ;  that  is  all.  Among  the 
defectives  we  may  include  all  kinds  of  defect,  physical, 
mental,  and  moral,  up  to  the  cases  in  which  the  defect 
becomes  of  actual  or  threatened  damage  to  others  in 
some  way ;  in  this  case,  we  begin  to  have  various  sorts 
of  violent  and  criminal  persons.  These,  again,  society 
deals  summarily  with.  The  opposition  is  real ;  but  it  is 
not  fruitful. 

And  what  I  mean  by  saying  that  it  is  not  fruitful  is 
this :  that  these  men  have  no  following,  they  do  not  rep- 
resent an  influence  of  vitality  to  come  into  opposition  to 
the  organizing  and  reducing  forces  of  society.  They  fur- 
nish problems  both  to  society  and  to  the  individual,  but 
neither  finds  in  them  an  ally. 

283.  Yet  there  is  one  interesting  aspect  of  the  defect 
recognized  as  moral,  which  brings  it  in  some  degree 
within  the  range  of  our  earlier  topics.  Crime  is  con- 
tagious. Crime  is  a  defect  which  becomes,  from  the 
sphere  in  which  it  develops,  essentially  anti-social.  So 
the  contagion  of  it,  the  following  that  it  gets  from  the 
fact  of  '  plastic  imitation  '  already  spoken  of,  leads  to  a 
semi-organized  revolt,  in  some  cases,  against  the  highest 
sanctions  of  society.  It  is  clear,  however,  that  such 

1  Above,  Chap.  II.,  §  3. 


The  Civil  Sanctions  433 

movements  of  contagion  in  crime,  as  similar  movements 
in  the  acts  of  the  mob,  fall  within  the  sphere  of  impulse 
in  the  individual's  consciousness.  That  is  all  that  need 
be  added  to  what  has  already  been  said.1 

284.  There  remain,  however,  two  great  classes  of  the 
'exceptional.'  They  are  the  intellectually  exceptional  and 
the  ethically  exceptional.  When  we  come  to  put  the 
question  whether  in  these  there  is  any  opposition  between 
the  personal  and  the  social  sanctions,  certain  truths  imme- 
diately come  to  mind,  drawn  from  the  consideration  of 
the  genius  in  the  earlier  chapter. 

We  found  that  the  man  of  exceptionally  good  intellect- 
ual endowment  might  be  a  variation  in  one  or  both  of  two 
ways.  He  might  be  a  great  thinker  and  a  man  of  good 
social  judgment  —  the  true  genius  —  or  a  man  of  great 
intellectual  ability  and  of  poor  judgment  —  the  pseudo- 
genius.  We  also  saw  that  a  man  of  either  of  these 
types  might  come  into  direct  conflict  with  the  sanctions 
of  society :  the  genius,  to  instruct ;  and  the  pseudo-genius, 
to  rebel.  Let  us  rest  for  the  present  in  this  conclusion, 
referring  for  its  justification  to  the  earlier  section  of  our 
essay ;  and  say,  as  a  net  gain  to  our  thought,  that  real 
opposition  may  arise  between  the  personal  and  the  social 
sanctions  of  a  man  on  the  side  of  his  intelligence.  He 
may  not  judge  true  what  society  judges  true ;  and  he  may 
not  submit  voluntarily,  or  at  all. 

This  may  take  two  forms  from  the  point  of  view  of  such 
a  man's  sanctions.  First,  the  '  sanction  of  truth '  may  be 
invoked  by  him  in  his  theoretical  thinking,  and  he  may 
adopt  ends  different  from  those  currently  pursued.  Second, 
he  may  invoke  the  '  sanction  of  success  '  both  with  refer- 

1  Above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  5. 
2F 


434     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

ence  to  the  action  which  society  requires  of  him  and  with 
reference  to  the  regulations  which  are  social  —  by  success 
understanding  the  expediency  and  appropriateness  of  the 
results  secured  to  the  ends  which  he  and  society  agree  in 
setting  up. 

This  conclusion  may  be  added  to  that  of  the  same  kind 
reached  above,  where  we  considered  the  case  of  the  excep- 
tional judgment  of  the  average  man ;  and  we  have  the 
view  that  there  may  be  direct  opposition  between  the  sanc- 
tions of  the  two  kinds,  social  and  personal,  in  the  intel- 
lectual sphere,  —  a  confirmation  of  the  general  statements 
made  at  the  beginning  of  our  consideration  of  the  civil 
sanctions. 

The  consideration  of  the  corresponding  ethical  conflict 
which  is  due  to  the  individual's  moral  variations  follows 
on  a  later  page.1  It  implicates  the  entire  theory  of  social 
progress,  which  is  still  to  be  expounded.  The  normal 
ethical  and  religious  sanctions,  however,  are  considered  in 
the  next  paragraph. 

§  4.    The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions 

285.  Coming,  finally,  to  ask  about  the  ethical  and  reli- 
gious sanctions  which  the  social  life  imposes  upon  men, 
we  find  it  possible  to  be  very  brief ;  for  in  this  sphere  the 
distinction  between  the  personal  and  the  social  is  not 
generally  made,  even  in  society  itself,  in  our  day. 

It  seems  evident  from  the  discussions  of  preceding 
pages  that  there  can  be  no  opposition  between  society 
and  the  individual  in  the  matter  of  the  essential  demands 
of  the  moral  and  religious  consciousness.  The  fact  of 

*  Chap.  XIV.,  §§  3,  4. 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions      435 

'  publicity '  in  all  religious  and  ethical  thought  makes  it 
necessary  that  the  same  ideal  should  be  erected  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  community  in  which  the  individual 
is  reared,  since  the  growth  of  the  ideal  self-thought  in 
the  individual  depends  constantly  upon  the  absorption  of 
moral  and  religious  suggestions  from  the  social  environ- 
ment. This  has  been  spoken  of  at  sufficient  length. 
Both  the  individuals  and  society  must  be  moral  and  reli- 
gious, and  similarly  moral  and  religious.  Speaking,  then, 
of  the  '  matter '  of  the  ideal  consciousness,  as  it  is  realized 
in  the  'ought'  judgments,  on  the  one  hand,  and  in  the  feel- 
ings of  dependence  and  mystery,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may 
say  that  opposition  does  not  normally  arise  between  society 
and  the  man.  Their  sanction  is  the  same,  —  a  function  of 
the  necessary  movement  of  the  human  mind  in  its  devel- 
opment toward  an  ideal  self -thought.1  In  the  ethical  judg- 
ments this  sanction  is  administered  exclusively  by  the 
individual  conscience.  It  is  a  personal  sanction ;  yet  the 
'  publicity '  of  it  makes  it  also  a  matter  of  mutual  judg- 
ment, to  which  each  individual  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
peculiarly  sensitive. 

The  same  may  be  said  in  the  main  of  the  religious  life. 
Historically,  it  is  true,  there  has  been  a  real  question  here; 
and  history  shows  us  the  possibility  of  an  acute  opposition 
in  the  religious  sphere.  Religion  has  been  given  an  arti- 
ficial civil  sanction.  But  yet  it  is  true,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
that  there  is  now,  at  least  in  the  countries  which  separate 
State  and  Church,  and  make  the  right  of  worship  a  matter 
of  the  individual  conscience,  no  question  about  public 

1  The  identity  of  the  social  ideal  with  the  personal  ideal  is  also  the  outcome 
of  the  detailed  discussions  of  social  progress  which  are  to  follow. 


436     His  Social  Sanctions :  Social  Opposition 

religious  sanctions,  since  religion  is  no  longer  a  thing  of 
recognized  social  sanction  at  all. 

286.  As  far  as  there  is,  however,  in  informal  urgency 
about  religious  conformity,  —  a  sort  of  sanction  exerted 
upon  the  individual  through  the  social  usages  and  strenu- 
ous beliefs  of  his  community, — this  comes  under  the  head 
of   pedagogical  sanction   of   the  more  conventional   type 
seen  in  public  opinion,  of   which  we  have  already  said 
enough.     The  average  man  yields  so  readily  to  suggestion 
in  this  sphere,  and  goes,  indeed,  so  readily  to  extremes  in 
his  suggestibility,  that  the  sphere  of  religion  becomes  and 
has  always  been  a  stronghold  of  the  conservative  spirit. 
This  is  the  more  emphasized  in  history  by  the  dogmatic 
claims  of  religious  systems,  which  amount  to  civil  sanc- 
tions of  a  supernatural  kind,  so  to  speak,  coming  to  rein- 
force the  pedagogical  sanctions,   and  so  to  create  what 
may  be  called  a  new  sanction  altogether,  —  that  of  divine 
authority.     The   relation   of   this   to   the  other  forms  of 
sanction  does  not  concern  us  directly,  except  as  raising 
the  new  question  as  to  the  autonomy  of  the  individual  in 
his  action  under  the  sanctions  which  he  finds  personal  to 
himself.     Considered  in  this  light,  it  is  well  to  look  a  little 
more  closely  at  what    I    may  designate  the    sanction   of 
religious  authority. 

287.  It  is  when  we  come  to  what  may  be  called  the 
'  form  '  of   the  religious  sentiment,  —  the  institutions,  and 
more  especially  the  doctrines,  in  which  it  is  cast  at  this 
time  or  that,  —  that  we  find  this  influence  in  operation.     A 
genetic  theory  of  doctrine  —  of  which  religious  doctrine  is 
the  best  instance  —  remains  to  be  written.     But  when  it 
is  written,  it  will  have  to  answer  the  question  as  to  the 
general  relation  of  the  human  intelligence  to  human  senti- 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions        437 

ment,  and  the  social  uses  made  of  the  intelligence  in  influ- 
encing sentiment.  The  problem  of  the  rise,  progress,  and 
sanction  of  religious  doctrine  really  rests  upon  that  of 
the  relation  of  these  different  personal  functions  to  one 
another. 

In  the  first  place,  we  have  seen  that  the  essential  utility 
of  the  intelligence,  both  in  race  development  and  in  the 
individual's  personal  growth,  is  its  use  in  opening  the 
avenues  and  directing  the  expressions  of  feeling,  emotion, 
and  sentiment.  This  appeared  in  the  checks  and  inhi- 
bitions which  we  saw  the  child  exerting  upon  his  own  con- 
duct as  soon  as  he  came  to  act  intelligently.  It  appeared 
also  in  the  social  uses  which  we  saw  him  so  acutely 
making  of  the  attitudes,  emotions,  actions,  of  others  in 
his  social  environment.  We  saw  reason  to  believe  also 
that  this  is  so  important  a  factor  in  social  progress  — 
this  intellectual  control  of  the  social  agencies  —  that  its 
advent  marks  one  of  the  great  crises  in  race-history. 
We  should  expect,  if  this  be  true,  that  this  all-directing 
power  —  the  power  of  thought  —  would  not  leave  this 
highest  province  of  our  emotional  nature  free  from  its 
constructive  endeavour,  either  in  the  one  province  —  the 
individual's  private  judgments  —  or  in  the  other,  the  reli- 
gious judgments  of  the  race. 

This  expectation  is  realized  in  the  very  relation  which 
intelligence  bears  to  sentiment.  This  has  also  been  inti- 
mated. The  content  of  religious  sentiment  takes  on,  by 
the  very  conditions  of  its  rise  in  and  with  the  individual's 
personal  growth,  certain  forms  of  rational  statement.  The 
categories  of  personality,  cause,  and  design  are  among  these 
constant  intelligent  moulds  of  the  religious  ideal ;  and  the 
concrete  filling  which  they  get,  once  and  again,  has  its  char- 


438     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

acter  from  the  degree  of  refinement  which  the  personality 
constructions,  sustaining  the  ideal,  show  at  this  epoch  or 
that.  There  must  always  arise,  therefore,  religious  doc- 
trines in  the  individual  and  religious  dogmas  in  society. 

288.  We  have  also  seen  that  there  is  a  necessary  ejec- 
tive  postulation  of  the  intellectual  content  of  the  ideal ; 
in  this  case,  of  the  religious  formulation.     The  existence 
of  the  object  of  worship  is  a  function  of  its  very  thought ; 
for  there  is  no  divorce  between  personal  thought  and  per- 
sonal belief.      Reality  comes  only  by  an  artificial  abstrac- 
tion from  thought.    So  there  is  always  a  direct  objectifying 
of  religious  sentiment  in  the  world.     Men  are  theists  in 
some  form. 

289.  And  man  is  not  isolated.     His  sense  of  the  pub- 
licity of  his  beliefs  makes  him,  in  a  sense,  a  legislator 
for  others.      His  own  sense  of  ethical  obligation  is  just 
this  element  of  publicity  itself  reflected  subjectively.     So 
the  obligation  to  do  what  he  ought  and  to  make  others 
do  what   they  ought  is  never  absent   from  his  sense  of 
the  divine  being  who  is  the  embodiment  of  what  ought 
to  be  done,  and  the  source  of  its  sanction. 

There  arises,  therefore,  ipso  facto,  with  the  religious 
sentiment,  some  public  religious  institution.  It  is  a  social 
institution.  In  early  times,  before  the  differentiation  of 
the  sentiments,  it  is  also  a  political  institution.  This 
institution  becomes,  from  the  element  of  publicity,  more 
a  rallying-place  for  conservatism  than  any  other  institu- 
tion. It  has  the  supernatural  sanction  direct  from  the 
personal  divinity.  The  individual  who  is  so  far  excep- 
tional in  his  personal  growth  as  to  reach  an  intellectual 
construction  of  the  religious  ideal  different  in  its  form 
from  the  form  thus  divinely  sanctioned,  is  a  rebel  against 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions      439 

society  and  against  God.  And  it  is  only  a  step  for  society 
to  conclude,  in  such  a  case,  as  it  concludes  in  all  the  cases 
of  anti-social  individuals  who  are  harmful  to  established 
institutions,  that  such  an  individual  should  be  suppressed. 
History  bears  witness  to  the  strenuousness  of  this  convic- 
tion. 

290.  Religious  doctrine  is  an  attempt  to   put  into  in- 
tellectual formulas  the  ideal  which  shall  satisfy  the  sense 
of  dependence,  mystery,  sin  —  and  all  the  phases  of  reli- 
gious and  ethical  emotion  —  once  for  all.     It  must  be  once 
for  all,  since  its  very  ideal  demands  its  finality.     But  this 
once-for-allness,  with  the  legislative  character  for  all  intel- 
ligences which  goes  with  it,  makes  it  impossible  that  it 
should  provide  for  the  very  process  of  development  which 
its  own  genesis  and  social   progress  require.     So  when 
there  arises  a  reformer,  a  prophet,  a  new  systematizer, 
he  can  get  recognition  only  in  one  of  two  ways,  both  of 
which  are  interestingly  represented  in  great  historical  per- 
sonages;    either  (i)  by  making  the  revelation  which  he 
brings  purely  practical,  i.e.,  in  the  social  and  ethical  sphere 
of  personal  attitude,  in  which  improvement  is  directly  en- 
joined, or  (2)  by  showing  that  his  doctrines  are  but  new 
interpretations  of  old  truths,  serving  to  confirm  the  faith 
of  society  and  the  teachings  of  the  ecclesiastical  circle. 
But  it  is  evident  that  either  of  these  may  be  a  subter- 
fuge ;  a  surrender  to  the  finality  which  the  supernatural 
sanction  attaches  to  religious  formulations.     It  remains  to 
ask  how  religious  progress  is  possible,  if  this  supernatural 
sanction  continue  in  force. 

291.  I  think  the  solution  of  history  goes  far  to  prove 
the  theoretical  solution  of  the  conflict  between  the  per- 
sonal and  the  social  sanctions  given  above.      There  has 


440     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

been  a  gradual  reduction  of  the  social  form  of  religious 
sanction,  claiming  both  supernatural  and  civil  authority,  to 
the  ethical  form  of  personal  sanction.  As  long  as  the 
supernatural  sanction  had  its  locus  in  society,1  so  long  did 
it  necessarily  weigh  on  the  side  of  conservatism  and  lead 
to  social  stagnation  and  decay.  For  then  the  formulas  in 
which  it  was  embodied,  having  no  part  in  the  progres- 
sive social  movement  which  the  individual's  personal 
growth  represented,  remained  final,  dogmatic,  and  extrin- 
sic as  well  to  the  more  refined  and  subtle  movements 
of  social  and  ethical  sentiment.  It  has  been  just  the 
growth  of  ethical  sentiment,  with  the  ever  renewed  and 
revised  adjustments  in  the  social  body,  to  which  it  tends 
to  lead,  which  has  made  possible  the  reduction  of  the 
supernatural  sanction  to  the  personal  form.  This  has  led 
to  a  gradual  entrainment  of  the  religious  sentiment  in  the 
channels  of  ethical  culture,  with  a  corresponding  emphasis 
upon  the  religious  autonomy  of  the  individual,  while 
this  in  turn  has  strengthened  the  personal  form  of  the 
religious  sanction,  as  of  course  it  must ;  since  it  has 
brought  to  an  end  the  conflict  between  the  sanctions  of 
personal  duty  administered  by  conscience  and  those  of 
religious  rites  and  observances  administered  by  an  infal- 
lible but  external  authority.  The  place  of  the  social  reli- 
gious sanction,  therefore,  in  human  progress  has  been,  like 
all  other  social  sanctions,  available  and  advantageous  for 
progress  —  that  is,  apart  from  its  conservative  function  — 
only  in  proportion  as  it  has  reflected  essential  ethical 
growth ;  and  so  it  has  been  constantly  undergoing  restate- 
ment, as  the  demands  of  the  developing  ethical  conscious- 
ness have  been  enlarged.  In  so  far  as  it  has  tended,  in 

1  Generally  in  the  state. 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions      441 

this  epoch  or  that,  to  divorce  itself  from  the  ethical  sense 
of  the  community,  and  to  crystallize  into  dogmatic  state- 
ment to  which  consent  and  submission  were  arbitrarily 
enjoined,  so  far  has  religion,  or,  more  properly  speaking, 
theology,  been  a  limitation  to  be  transcended  —  a  strait- 
jacket  to  be  thrown  off.  It  is  thus  that  the  great  reforma- 
tion movements  of  religious  history  have  arisen. 

292.  Finally,  it  should  be  remarked  that  the  reduction 
of  the  social  sanction  of  religion  to  the  ethical  form  of 
personal  sanction  reverses  the  relation  which  is  often 
assumed  between  morals  and  religion.  The  higher  forms 
of  religious  sentiment  arise  by  the  same  mental  movement 
which  issues  in  ethical  sentiment  also ;  that  of  the  devel- 
opment of  the  ideal  or  public  self-thought.  Hence  it  is 
impossible  to  separate  the  two  sanctions  except  in  the 
way  just  indicated  as  that  of  early  history,  by  which  the 
religious  sanction  was  lodged  in  society,  whether  in  Church 
or  State.  So  the  question  as  to  which  has  priority  in 
the  purely  personal  realm  is  largely  a  fictitious  question. 
Yet  inasmuch  as  the  ethical  involves  positive  mental  con- 
struction, and  reflects  the  actual  thought  of  the  social  situ- 
ation, it  must  be  the  nerve-element  in  the  development  of 
the  individual,  and  with  him,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,1  of 
society  also.  The  religious  sentiment  is  in  a  sense  an 
added  thing  :  not  mechanically  added  at  all,  but  considered 
as  lying  less  near  to  the  centre  of  personal  growth,  and 
as  being  a  further  outcome,  in  the  life  of  emotion,  of  the 
process  of  growth.  The  individual  could  not  believe  in 
a  good  deity  until  he  had  conceived  the  good  person  and 
become  aware  of  the  obligation  in  his  own  breast  impelling 
to  the  achievement  of  like  good  personality.  Before  thi$ 

i  Chap.  XIII.,  §  ?. 


442     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

the  thought  of  deity  is  without  the  attribute  goodness, 
because  the  self-thought  is  without  it.  There  is  then  a 
continuous  upward  progress  in  the  religious  life  keeping 
pace  with  the  progress  of  the  ethical  life. 

If  the  question  should  still  be  put,  therefore,  in  the  form 
in  which  a  recent  writer,  already  referred  to,1  has  put  it, 
making  his  answer  the  keynote  to  his  theory  of  social 
progress,  we  should  be  obliged  to  answer  it  in  a  way  which 
directly  antagonizes  his  theory.  Instead  of  considering 
the  religious  sanction  as  the  leading  motive  to  human 
progress,  and  that  despite  the  lack  of  support  from  the 
'  rational  sanction '  so  called,  we  should  say  that  the 
religious  is  an  outgrowth  and  constant  index  of  the  ethical 
sanction,  that  its  social  value  is  mainly  on  the  side  of  its 
conservative  influence,  and  that  the  ethical  is  the  most  im- 
portant as  well  as  the  most  '  rational '  of  all  the  springs  of 
human  action,  whether  public  or  private. 

293.  It  has  been  said  that  the  identification  of  the 
religious  and  ethical  sanctions  in  the  breast  of  the  indi- 
vidual tends  to  emphasize  the  religious  and  give  value  to 
it ;  a  further  word  may  be  in  place  to  show  that  this  is 
true. 

We  have  seen  in  our  earlier  expositions  of  the  '  dialectic 
of  personal  growth '  that  the  social  tests  to  which  the  grow- 
ing results  of  personal  interpretation  and  thought  are  all 
along  brought,  are  essential  to  the  growth  of  personality 
itself.  A  function  of  the  ejective  personalities,  which 
are  our  social  fellows,  is  just  to  afford  constant  confirma- 
tions, checks,  touchstones,  to  the  individual  with  respect 
to  the  value  of  his  creations.  It  is  through  the  operation 
of  this  intrinsic  social  checking,  that  the  judgment  of  the 

1  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd. 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions      443 

individual  upon  the  worth  of  his  personal  thoughts  arises 
and  grows  to  be  more  and  more  adequate. 

If  this  be  true  of  the  lower  stages  of  development  in 
which  the  concrete  personalities  of  our  environment  serve 
as  monitors  and  guides,  how  much  the  more  in  the  higher 
reaches  where  the  ejective  personality  represents  the  ideal, 
the  good,  the  perfect,  the  Deity.  The  subjective  move- 
ment whereby  the  ejective  ideal  of  the  religious  life  is 
constituted  and  given  real  existence  and  personality,  is 
essential,  at  each  stage  of  ethical  progress,  to  the  continued 
erection  of  the  subjective  ethical  ideal  itself.  The  religious 
consciousness  is,  therefore,  in  its  integrity  both  a  cause  and 
an  effect.  It  is  the  effect  of  the  ethical  construction  which 
has  gone  before,  and  which  is  embodied  in  the  content  of 
the  accepted  religious  beliefs.  But  it  is  cause  in  respect 
to  the  complete  acceptance  and  loyal  pursuit  of  the  ethical 
ideal ;  and  it  is  also,  in  so  far,  cause  in  respect  to  the  fur- 
ther progress  of  the  ethical  construction,  which  involves, 
among  the  elements  which  go  into  its  establishing,  the  full 
social  confirmation  derived  through  personal  relation  to 
the  ejective  personality  which  the  religious  life  postulates. 

Religious  faith  and  with  it  religious  institutions  are, 
therefore,  indispensable  to  humanity,  because  they  repre- 
sent normal  and  essential  mental  movements.  They  are 
necessary  at  once  to  ethical  competence  and  to  ethical 
progress.  Yet  it  still  remains  true,  as  we  saw  immediately 
above,  that  in  social  progress  they  exert  their  influence 
indirectly,  through  the  ethical  sanction  which  is  personal 
to  the  individual. 

294.  So  much  for  the  philosophy  of  the  religious  sanc- 
tion. It  bears  directly  on  our  present  topic.  It  shows 
historically  the  possibility  .of  a  direct  opposition  in  the 


444     H*s  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

ethical  and  religious  realm  between  society  and  the  indi- 
vidual ;  and  for  us  its  main  lesson  is  there.  In  our  present 
stage  of  civilization,  as  was  said  above,  it  does  not  com- 
monly take  this  form ;  yet  it  sometimes  does,  as  is  seen 
in  religious,  ecclesiastical,  and  even  ethical  '  boycotting,' 
and  other  forms  of  interference  with  the  individual's  per- 
sonal life.  We  are  emancipated  from  this  form  of  the 
opposition,  so  far  indeed  as  we  are,  only  through  the  bat- 
tles which  individuals  have  fought,  largely  single-handed, 
with  society  and  its  institutions. 

The  reality  of  this  conflict  between  authority  and  thought 
is  now  to  be  found  in  our  own  bosoms. 

We  feel  the  finality  of  the  religious  teaching  of  our 
childhood  very  strongly  perhaps ;  it  has  all  the  weight  of 
social  heredity  and  the  formal  shape  into  which  our  social 
growth  has  moulded  it ;  and  if  so  be  that  through'that  rest- 
lessness of  thought  which  makes  man  at  once  the  inventive 
and  the  social  being  that  he  is  —  if  once  through  this  we 
find  our  ethical  ideal  taking  on  another  embodiment  than 
that  which  the  religious  sanctions  of  our  training  have  ear- 
lier given  to  it,  then  is  the  conflict  a  long  and  hard  return, 
in  our  own  life,  to  the  scenes  of  strife  which  have  marked 
the  saddest  periods  of  human  history.1 

1  I  think  it  may  be  said,  also,  that  purely  ethical  conflicts  between  society 
and  the  individual  are  largely  reduced  in  number  by  the  tendency  of  social 
morality  to  clothe  itself  in  religious  form,  and  so  to  get  a  further  sanction 
from  positive  religious  authority.  The  reverse  is  also  true.  The  ethical  re- 
former becomes  the  religious  prophet,  thus  adding  to  his  word  of  social  and 
ethical  reformation  the  sanction  of  divine  revelation. 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  say  here,  also,  that  this  discussion  brings  nowhere 
into  debate  the  possibility  of  an  actual  supernatural  influence  in  human  prog- 
ress. However  that  may  be,  the  human  mind  works  as  it  does.  Suppose,  for 
example,  that  the  Christian  Scriptures  contain  an  actual  revelation  with  a  super 
natural  sanction,  the  content  of  the  revelation  would  ttill  have  to  undergo 


The  Ethical  and  Religious  Sanctions      445 

295.  We  have  now  completed  our  survey  of  the  so-called 
social  sanctions.  We  have  found  that,  while  it  is  right  to 
call  them  social  sanctions,  their  opposition  to  the  personal 
sanctions  is  largely  fictitious.  Indeed,  we  are  justified  in 
saying  that  there  is  no  social  sanction  which  does  not  — 
both  in  its  origin  and  in  its  function  —  rest  upon  the  per- 
sonal ones.  The  oppositions  which  may  arise  between 
society  and  the  individual  are,  in  each  case,  capable  of 
being  construed  as  oppositions  between  the  sanctions 
which  the  individual's  own  personal  nature  prescribes  at 
different  periods  of  his  growth,  or  by  reason  of  shifting 
emphasis  in  his  mental  operations. 

Of  these  oppositions,  only  two  cases  stand  out  as  real 
factors  in  the  social  problem  on  the  one  side,  and  in  the 
ethical  problem  on  the  other  side.  These  two  oppositions 
are  those  which  represent  the  individual  (i)  in  intellectual 
and  (2)  in  ethical  revolt  against  the  prescriptions  of  society. 
The  revolt  of  intelligence  is  the  motive  of  the  theoretical 
reconstructions  with  which  men  wish  to  reform  society  or 
to  instruct  it,  in  this  matter  or  in  that.  The  ethical  re- 
volt takes  the  form  of  protest  or  of  attempted  reconstruc- 
tion in  the  spheres  of  the  ethical,  religious,  and  generally 
sentimental  usages  to  which  society  is  committed.  In  each 
of  these  realms,  the  opposition  brought  out  by  this  revolt  of 
intellect  or  sentiment  is  so  sharp  that  its  meaning  becomes 
the  outstanding  problem  of  social  and  ethical  theory.  It 
remains  to  see  whether  the  further  application  of  psycho- 
logical principles  will  throw  any  light  upon  its  meaning, 

successive  reinterpretations  with  the  growth  of  ethical  consciousness,  and  the 
sanction  would  be  ineffectual  and  quite  lacking  in  vitality  unless  made  over 
into  the  personal  life  of  the  individual  and  so  reinforced.  The  law  of  God 
could  not  be  law  to  man  until  man  legislated  it,  so  to  speak,  to  himself. 


446     His  Social  Sanctions:  Social  Opposition 

and  upon  the  terms  under  which  its  ultimate  solution  may 
be  expected. 

296.  This  application  of  psychological  principles,  how- 
ever, leads  us  to  undertake  a  broader  examination  of  the 
historical  movement  of  society  itself,  in  which  the  oppo- 
sitions between  the  individual's  intelligence  and  sentiment 
and  the  requirements  of  social  conformity  naturally  show 
themselves.  We  may  then  hope  to  see  the  function  of  the 
very  opposition  itself;  finding  that  it  contributes  a  factor  to 
the  philosophy  of  the  whole  movement.  In  that  case,  we 
may  finally  find  a  sanction  for  the  opposition  —  a  sanction 
of  the  philosophical  kind.  So  we  may  now  turn  to  the 
question :  what  place  in  social  development,  if  any,  has  the 
opposition  between  the  personal  sanctions  and  the  social 
sanctions  ? 


BOOK   II 
SOCIETY 


Strive  to  be  whole,  and  if  thou  lackest  the  powet, 
Be  part  of  a  whole,  and  serve  it  with  faithful  heart." 

—  SCHILLER. 


PART  V 
THE  PERSON  IN  ACTION 

CHAPTER  XI 
THE  SOCIAL  FORCES 

WE  have  now  come  to  a  point  in  our  study  at  which  the 
varied  lines  of  inquiry  concerning  the  individual  may  be 
drawn  together,  and  certain  indications  of  a  general  kind 
made  out  for  the  main  topic  which  concerns  us ;  the  rela- 
tion of  the  individual's  thoughts  and  actions  to  those 
which  society  adopts.  We  may  call  it,  in  a  sense,  a  syn- 
thesis of  the  earlier  chapters,  in  that  the  positions  now  to 
be  developed  include  the  points  of  view  arrived  at  in  the 
foregoing  pages. 

297.  If  we  use  the  phrase  '  social  forces '  to  indicate  the 
more  broadly  distinguished  influences  at  work  in  society, 
when  it  is  considered  as  a  progressive  organized  whole,  we 
may  distinguish  those  influences  which  have  their  locus 
of  origin  in  the  individual,  from  those  which  seem  to  have 
their  point  of  departure  in  the  social  organization.  The 
presence  of  the  individual  —  thinking,  struggling,  buying, 
selling,  loving,  hating,  quarrelling,  peacemaking  —  indicates 
a  type  of  activity  of  which  we  have  seen  many  illustrations 
in  the  foregoing  chapters.  This  is  a  constant  presence, 
and  it  constantly  serves  in  many  respects  to  interrupt  and 
modify  the  social  organization  and  its  movement.  The 

2G  449 


450  The  Social  Forces 

genius  we  have  found  to  be  such  an  influence ;  and  so  also 
is  the  criminal.  These  are  exaggerated  cases.  But  all 
individuals  have  some  degree  of  social  initiative ;  so  we 
may  put  the  individual  on  one  side  as  representing  a  type 
of  social  force.  Then  over  against  him  we  find  the  social 
body  existing  as  an  organization,  with  a  set  of  laws,  con- 
ventions, institutions,  customs,  etc.,  all  its  own.  The 
movement  which  it  represents  we  may  characterize  briefly 
as  a  movement  also  actuated  by  a  social  force :  that  in- 
herent in  the  existence  of  organized  society  itself.1 

These  two  types  of  '  social  force,'  the  more  exact  defi- 
nition of  which  is  to  follow,  do  not  represent  a  dualism 
in  the  social  body.  All  our  conclusions  have  been  in  quite 
the  opposite  sense.  No  such  dualism  is  possible  in  the 
philosophy  of  human  life ;  if,  indeed,  such  a  philosophy  be 
possible.  On  the  contrary,  the  social  body  represents 
formulations  which  in  some  way  aggregate  or  synthetize 
the  progress  made  by  individuals.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  individuals,  considered  as  embodying  a  social  force, 
only  give  particular  and  variable  statement  to  the  social 
outcome,  through  the  process  of  social  heredity.  This  truth 
has  become  evident  in  the  foregoing  chapter,  in  which  the 
oppositions  between  the  individual  and  the  social  body 
have  been  seen  to  reduce  themselves  to  two,  representing 
the  revolt  of  the  individual's  intelligence  and  sentiment 


1  As  ordinarily  used  the  expression  'social  forces'  denotes  a  great  con- 
geries of  agencies  of  different  orders,  physical,  mental,  industrial,  military,  etc. 
I  see  no  hope  of  results  in  this  field  while  such  use  of  terms  prevails.  The  two 
'  forces '  which  I  speak  of  are  both  psychological;  and  inasmuch  as  only  psy- 
chological functions  can  be  intrinsic  to  a  psychological  movement,  there  can 
be  no  further  tocial  forces.  The  geographical  environment,  for  example,  may 
limit  or  hinder  social  life,  but  it  cannot  be  a  force  or  moment  in  that  life;  only 
its  representation  in  somebody's  mind  can  be  that. 


Distinction  of  Forces  451 

against  the  social  sanctions.  This  being  admitted,  it  now 
becomes  our  task  to  see  whether,  in  this  very  revolt,  with 
the  relative  and  partial  dualism  which  it  seems  to  create, 
we  may  still  find  any  constant  principle  binding  the  two 
factors  together. 

§  i.    Distinction  of  Forces 

298.  There  is  a  further  line  of  distinctions  which  comes 
up  to  help  us ;  also  based  upon  fact.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  it  was  the  average  man  whose  individual  activities 
were  found  to  equate  so  snugly  with  the  social  demands 
of  his  environment.  And  the  reason  was  found  to  be  that 
the  demands  of  the  social  environment  reflect  historically 
just  the  social  activities  of  the  average  man.  The  law  of 
the  majorities  in  political  life  and  the  need  of  'campaigns 
of  education  '  to  effect  even  the  most  evident  social  reforms, 
show  that  society  is  on  the  side  of  the  average,  as  we 
should  expect  from  our  theoretical  considerations.  The 
will  of  the  majority  is  not  an  abstraction.  It  is  a  great 
fact,  both  from  the  point  of  view  of  what  society  has 
already  effected,  and  in  view  of  what  it  is  still  to  accom- 
plish. We  never  hear  of  society  suddenly  making  up  its 
mind,  in  a  collective  way,  to  do  this  or  that ;  it  is  always 
individuals  who  work  upon  society  through  other  indi- 
viduals. The  result  is  reflected  in  society  through  the 
growth  of  public  opinion,  and  in  those  other  forms  of 
social  outcome  in  which  the  exertions  of  individuals  get 
themselves  recorded  and  made  vital  for  collective  action. 
So  it  is  safe,  at  the  outset,  to  say  that  the  force  found 
operative  in  the  collective  social  body  corresponds  to  the 
average,  conservative,  less  original,  and  more  suggestible 
individual  activities  in  the  community. 


452  The  Social  Forces 

Leaving  this  statement  in  its  general  irtfm,  and  its  fur- 
ther justification  to  follow,  we  find  a  coftresponding  fact  on 
the  side  of  the  force  represented  by  the  individual  person 
as  such.  Just  in  so  far  as  .he  is  a  separate  social  force,  in 
so  far  is  he  the  exceptional  individual ;  the  man  who  by 
!his  personal  endowment  or  attainment  finds  himself  stand- 
ing relatively  alone,  with  the  peculiar  duties  and  satisfac- 
tions which  such  a  position  creates.  If  this  be  so,  and  if 
such  men  represent  any  general  tendency  in  the  social 
movement,  —  have  any  general  meaning  anywhere  in  the 
history  of  humanity,  —  then  it  is  to  them  that  we  must 
look  for  the  redemption  of  society  from  the  conservatism 
and  hard  and  fast  solidification  which  would  come  from 
the  law  of  the  average,  seen  in  the  social  outcome  due  to 
the  activities  of  the  majority.  This  again  seems  so  evi- 
dent that  we  may  content  ourselves  with  this  general  inti- 
mation of  it ;  and  now  go  on  to  make  a  closer  formulation 
of  the  two  general  functions  which  have  thus  been  assigned 
to  the  two  sorts  of  social  force. 

299.  I  may  first  state  the  formulations  which  I  shall 
maintain,  and  then  attempt  to  justify  them  :  — 

1.  The  individual  is  the  particularizing  social  force. 

2.  Society  is  the  generalizing  social  force. 

300.  The  best  way  to  get  a  broad  general  view  of  the 
activity  of  these  social  forces,  in  their  operation  together, 
is  by  using  a  biological  analogy.     Biological  progress  is, 
as  is  now  believed,  the  result  of  two  co-operating  agencies, 
both  of  which  come  to  view  in  the  phenomena  of  heredity. 
Gallon  and  Weismann  have  shown  that  there  is  a  law  of 
1  regression,'  called  by  various  names,  by  which  in  the  case 
of  the  cessation  of  the  process  of  natural  selection  together 
with  the  continued  free  intermarriage  of  individuals  having 


Distinction  of  Forces  453 

all  sorts  of  characters,  —  as  in  human  society,  —  the  further 
perfection 1  of  any  specific  line  of  characters  is  rendered 
impossible.  There  is  a  tendency  to  the  recurrence  of  what 
Galton  has  called  the  '  mid-parent,'  a  fictitious  quantity  or 
individual,  who  represents  the  average  or  mean  between 
the  two  parents,  in  each  case  of  offspring.  When  this 
state  of  things  is  continued  through  many  generations,  and 
with  many  pairs  in  each  generation,  there  is  a  certain  set- 
tling or  establishing  of  values,  in  respect  to  each  function 
or  character,  about  a  constant  mean.  In  human  society 
to-day  this  is  true  of  our  physical  characteristics ;  since 
the  artificial  preservation  of  the  unfit  of  all  kinds  —  the 
diseased,  halt,  and  weak  —  gives  approximately  a  case  of 
free  intermarriage  of  all  degrees  of  perfection  and  imper- 
fection. 

In  animal  companies,  however,  in  which  there  is  still 
the  struggle  for  existence  weeding  out  the  inferior  cases, 
a  chance  is  given  to  another,  and  second  factor.  It  is 
the  principle  of  variations,  which  has  already  been  cited 
above.  Nature  produces  both  fit  and  unfit,  and  all  degrees 
of  each.  Reproduction,  moreover,  is  the  source  of  count- 
less individuals,  among  whom  are  some  which  would  rep- 
resent a  higher  type,  in  this  direction  or  that,  if  they  could 
escape  indiscriminate  intermarriage,  and  with  it  the  law  of 
regression.  Among  the  animals  nature  secures  just  this. 
The  weaker  and  more  unfit  do  not  live  to  intermarry  at  all ; 
there  are  no  hospitals  nor  physicians  in  the  animal  kingdom 
to  keep  the  diseased  alive ;  no  free  dispensaries  to  supply 
the  hungry.  So  the  stronger  which  survive  intermarry 
only  with  the  stronger  which  survive,  and  a  stronger  race 

1  I  do  not  accept  Weismann's  view,  however,  that  positive  decay  of  estab- 
lished characters  arises  from  this  state  of  things,  called  by  him  '  panmixia.' 


454  The  Social  Forces 

is  the  result,  since  the  next  generation  tends  now  to  a 
higher  mid-parent  represented  by  the  mean  between  two 
representative  individuals,  each  of  whom  is  more  excellent. 

Progress  in  biology,  therefore,  hangs  upon  two  things : 
(i)the  regression  of  the  whole  body  of  characters  in  a 
species  to  the  mean  or  mid-parent  value,  and  (2)  the  sur- 
vival of  the  best  individuals.  Without  the  regression  fac- 
tor, there  would  be  no  central  mass  of  relatively  fixed 
characters  representing  the  species  as  such,  and  establish- 
ing the  mean  about  which  the  individuals  might  vary  within 
safe  limits  in  the  given  environment  and  conditions  of  life. 
Without  the  variation  factor,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
would  be  no  individuals  of  unusual  excellence  to  set  higher 
up,  by  their  intermarriage,  the  value  of  the  mid-parent  or 
collective  mean.  The  assumptions,  moreover,  are  at  least 
two :  physical  heredity,  to  give  regression  its  opportunity, 
and  natural  selection,  to  give  the  variation  its  opportunity. 

301.  In  the  biological  sphere,  therefore,  we  see  the  two 
sorts  of  influence  at  work  which  I  have  called,  in  the  formu- 
lations above,  the  '  particularizing '  force  and  the  '  generaliz- 
ing' force.  The  tendency  to  the  mean  or  mid  value  is 
the  generalizing  force  in  biology.  It  is  accomplished  by 
physical  heredity.  The  new  values  introduced  by  variation 
show  the  particularizing  force.  It  gets  its  value  through 
natural  selection.  The  generalizing  force,  in  the  progress 
of  a  species  or  character,  is  represented  by  the  mean  or 
average  values  of  the  individuals  or  characters  taken  gen- 
erally or  collectively ;  the  particularizing  force  is  seen  at 
first  only  in  the  particular  individual. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  a  discussion  of  the  rela- 
tion of  social  progress  to  biological  progress,  or  the  pos- 
sible identity  of  the  two.  Yet  I  do  not  see  how,  as  long  as 


The  Particularizing  Social  Force          455 

we  have  bodies,  the  laws  of  biology  and  of  heredity  should 
cease  to  be  operative.  But  it  is  equally  plain. that  in  human 
society  certain  other  influences,  springing  from  intelligent 
and  social  life,  come  to  modify  the  outcome.  We  may 
simply  say,  therefore,  that  biological  laws  do  hold  all 
through  human  life,  but  that  we  sometimes  find  reason  for 
saying  that  they  are  interfered  with  by  other  devices  or 
laws.  Taking  the  biological  analogy,  therefore,  in  this 
case  under  these  limitations,  we  may  apply  it  to  the  social 
factors  as  such ;  finding  later  on  in  the  sequel  that  we  can 
formulate  a  more  exact  estimation  of  it. 

§  2.    The  Particularizing  Social  Force 

302.  In  the  first  place,  the  individual  produces  the  neru 
variations,  the  new  things  in  social  matter.  As  a  thinker, 
he  gives  birth  to  the  new  thoughts  by  which  the  conven- 
tions, beliefs,  opinions,  institutions,  of  society  are  modified, 
if  perchance  they  come  to  be  modified  at  all.  The  indi- 
vidual makes  the  inventions  which  overthrow  the  older 
devices  of  labour,  establish  communication,  commerce,  and 
intercourse,  and  introduce  new  eras  in  all  the  spheres  of 
human  attainment.  The  individual  feels  and  protests 
against  the  inadequate  and  the  socially  worn-out,  and 
teaches  other  individuals  so  to  do,  thus  producing  the  wide- 
spread revolutions  of  sentiment  by  which  the  slave  is  freed, 
woman  given  her  social  place,  and  all  men  made  free  and 
equal  before  civil  law.  The  individual  makes  the  moulds 
of  legislation  into  which  the  soft  materials  of  popular  re- 
form are  finally  cast.  The  individual  rises  to  the  emergency 
when  the  social  tide  of  suggestion  and  the  waves  of  passion 
are  about  to  break  in  popular  frenzy,  and  leads  society 


456  The  Social  Forces 

into  a  place  of  broader  outlook  and  quiet  content  in  its 
social  heritage.  All  this  the  individual  does,  and  by  so 
doing  he  fills  a  place  in  social  progress  which  is  vital  to 
its  life  and  indispensable  to  its  growth. 

By  calling  the  individual  considered  as  performing  this 
function  the  '  particularizing '  force,  however,  certain  more 
exact  things  are  meant ;  for  there  is  a  difference  between 
pointing  out  that  he  does  these  things,  and  giving  valid 
reasons  for  his  doing  them. 

303.  First,  the  individual  particularizes  on  the  basis  of 
the  generalizations  which  society  has  already  effected.  The 
individual  is  a  variation  just  because  there  is  a  mean 
from  which  to  vary.  If  he  varies  too  far  from  this 
mean,  he  must  perish ;  so  sometimes  the  genius,  and 
so  oftener  the  badly  defective.  So  with  his  thoughts ; 
his  attainments,  as  well  as  his  endowment,  cannot  be 
out  of  connection  with  those  of  other  men.  We  have 
already  seen  that  he  must  learn  the  lessons  of  society 
first,  and  produce  his  inventions  afterwards.  Further, 
he  must  judge  his  own  thoughts,  feelings,  reforms,  first 
by  the  judgment  which  is  itself  amenable  to  the  law  of 
the  mean,  before  he  can  bring  them  out  for  the  instruc- 
tion or  for  the  revolution  of  society.  His  very  good 
sense  of  the  value  of  his  thought-variations  is  itself  a 
variation,  and  must  not  be  too  great  a  one,  from  a  mean 
of  social  judgment.  In  short,  he  must  use  old  materials ; 
he  must  appeal  to  current  judgments ;  he  must  particu- 
larize a  new  form  or  degree  of  the  old.  He  does  not 
create ;  he  particularizes,  with  reference  to  the  social 
material  which  is  already  present  to  his  hand. 

Every  individual  who  is  not  in  all  respects  the  veriest 
reproduction  of  the  mean  does  this  in  some  degree.  He 


The  Particularizing  Social  Force         457 

must  perforce  think  his  thoughts  in  his  own  way,  no 
matter  how  commonplace  a  way  it  may  be.  His  special 
particularization  may,  from  its  very  dulness  and  sodden- 
ness,  represent  a  backward  tendency.  He  may  be  a 
victim  to  prejudice,  to  a 'narrow  set  of  social  influences, 
to  a  bad  education,  and  so  do  his  particularizing  from 
the  platform  of  a  false  social  generalization ;  just  as, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  may  be  caught  for  the  time  in 
an  eddy  or  cross-current  of  sentiment  and  suggestion, 
and  so  particularize  at  a  tangent  to  his  own  normal 
social  curve.  In  short,  all  sorts  of  variations  may  occur, 
as  we  have  abundantly  seen  in  considering  the  sanctions 
under  which  the  individual's  current  actions  are  performed. 
But  with  it  all,  there  he  stands,  the  one  particularizing 
agency ;  the  hope  of  social  progress ;  the  only  avenue 
through  which  the  social  temper  may  flow  and  still 
emerge  in  forms  new  and  particular,  for  the  weal  or 
woe  of  the  community  in  which  he  lives,  and  possibly 
of  the  world. 

304.  Second,  the  individual  particularizes  with  refer- 
ence to  his  own  mental  store.  This  also  we  have  seen 
in  considering  the  genius ;  but  it  is  true  of  all  men. 
Each  individual  must  take  out  certain  of  his  thoughts 
as  particular  secrets,  special  treasures,  gems  of  his  col- 
lection ;  cling  to  them  and  forget  the  rest.  And  inas- 
much as  each  individual  is  also  social,  this  choice  of 
his  must,  to  a  degree,  come  to  affect  the  particularizing 
which  he  does  of  the  current  social  material,  and  also 
that  done  by  others,  just  as  we  have  seen  that  the 
social  judgment,  by  a  reverse  relation,  affects  his  private 
selection.  His  private  preferences  make  him  more  open 
to  this  social  suggestion  than  to  that,  since  it  assimi- 


45 8  The  Social  Forces 

lates  one  and  fails  to  assimilate  the  other.  This  appears 
again  most  conspicuously  in  the  genius.  His  own  true 
thoughts  become  a  sort  of  social  measuring-rod,  a  net 
of  a  given  size  and  shape,  in  which  the  details  of  the 
social  life  in  general  take  on  special  form.  He  effects 
a  constant  give-and-take  between  his  own  and  society's 
thoughts,  and  so  gets  a  richer  particularization  on  the 
basis  of  them  all. 

Then,  as  the  individual  particularizes,  so  he  acts; 
thus  getting  the  various  forms  of  personal  sanction  which 
arouse  him.  Thus  his  actions  become  at  once  of  social 
value.  They  contribute  to  the  mass  of  social  'copy,'  on 
which  the  run  of  men  react ;  and  his  example  domi- 
nates the  Gesammtproduct  of  the  circle  in  wJiich  he 
moves.  Taken  alone,  he  may  be  of  course  of  little  mo- 
ment ;  and  in  speaking  of  the  individual  who  is  com- 
monplace enough  not  to  have  much  individual  value, 
we  are  speaking  just  of  the  great  mass  of  persons  in 
society ;  but  when  we  consider  all  of  them  together,  here 
is  just  the  most  important  progressive  factor  in  every- 
day social  life.  It  is  the  commonplace  men  who  lead 
to  the  good  or  to  the  bad  —  ahead  or  astray  —  the  com- 
monplace men.  Indeed,  the  man  of  greatest  personal 
influence  has  very  often  to  make  himself  commonplace 
in  order  to  wield  the  influence  actually  due  to  his  thought 
or  character.  This  is,  therefore,  the  most  general  and, 
on  the  whole,  —  apart  from  the  world-moving  crises  when 
the  great  men  play  their  part,  —  the  most  important  sort 
of  particularizing  done  by  the  individual :  the  settling 
with  himself  of  the  value  of  his  own  thoughts,  and  with 
them  of  the  actions  proper  to  embrace  and  impose  upon 
his  fellows. 


The  Particularizing  Social  Force          459 

305.  Third,  and  more  objectively,  he  particularizes  for 
the  future  and  for  society.  It  is  here  that  the  biological 
analogy  becomes  most  helpful.  We  saw  that  the  simple 
presence  of  variations  does  not  suffice  for  progress ;  for 
variations  are  in  all  directions.  So  the  individual  par- 
ticularizes thoughts  good  and  bad.  In  the  high  ethical 
sphere  his  conduct  sometimes  gets  particularized  in  ways 
which  his  own  ethical  sanction  —  which  is  nearest  to  the 
voice  of  society  —  does  not  ratify.  So,  if  there  are  varia- 
tions both  in  the  products  of  the  individual's  mind  and 
also  in  the  sorts  of  minds  possessed  by  different  indi- 
viduals, then  biology  shows  the  result.  We  should 
expect  an  evening-up  in  endowment  from  generation  to 
generation,  and  a  regression  to  a  set  and  average  social 
life.  Not  only  should  the  physical  and  intellectual  capaci- 
ties of  mankind  remain  about  stationary,  but  a  certain  con- 
servative conventionalism  should  characterize  the  social 
life.  In  biology  we  find,  however,  that  only  the  fittest 
variations  come  to  fruition  in  posterity  by  the  law  of  sur- 
vival with  the  ruthless  'struggle  for  existence.'  So  the 
mean  is  raised  and  the  species  makes  progress,  except  in 
the  case  of  man,  where  the  effect  of  indiscriminate  inter- 
marriage and  the  prevalence  of  '  artificial  selection '  do 
seem  to  realize  the  stationary  result  which  we  should 
expect.1 

Indeed,  as  regards  physical  and  mental  capacities,  we 
find  that  the  law  of  '  survival  of  the  fittest '  does  not  apply 
as  among  the  animals,  because  in  many  spheres  the  com- 

1  This  is  a  much-debated  point  —  whether  the  level  of  intellectual  capacity 
has  grown  higher  with  higher  culture.  It  is  not  our  problem  now,  —  real 
social  progress  being  in  question,  —  so  we  need  not  reach  an  argued  conclu- 
sion; but  there  seems  to  be  little  or  no  evidence  that  it  has. 


460  The  Social  Forces 

petition  of  organisms  is  greatly  reduced  through  certain 
methods  of  intelligent  and  social  preservation  of  the  infe- 
rior members.  In  human  life  we  keep  the  inferior  bodies 
alive  and  also  let  them  marry ;  and  we  also  keep  the  lower 
intelligences  alive  and  active.  The  only  people  against 
whom  society  wages  war,  and  against  whom  she  must 
wage  war  in  order  to  her  own  life,  are  the  anti-social, 
represented  most  prominently  in  the  criminal  class. 

We  should  expect,  therefore,  since  the  safeguard  of 
progress  in  the  biological  world  —  the  law  of  survival  of 
the  fittest,  with  its  negative  application  to  the  unfit  —  is 
removed,  to  find  the  sort  of  regression  that  comes  on  in  the 
biological  world  when  this  principle  ceases  its  operation. 

Yet  this  is  not  the  case  in  the  social  life.  As  a  fact, 
society  is  making  what  we  call  progress — the  sort  of  prog- 
ress represented  by  civilization,  material  comfort,  ethical 
sensitiveness,  culture,  etc.  — all  the  while.1  We  are  forced 
to  conclude,  therefore,  that  this  sort  of  progress  is  not 
dependent  on  any  law  which  can  get  statement  in  anal- 
ogy with  the  law  of  survival  of  the  fittest.  And,  as  the 
facts  show,  the  reason  is  to  be  found  just  in  this  process 
of  the  particularizing  of  material  by  the  individual  of 
which  we  are  now  speaking;  taken  in  connection  with 
the  corresponding  fact  of  social  propagation  or  '  generali- 
zation,' yet  to  be  spoken  of. 

The  particularizing  by  the  individual  supplies  the  es- 
sential material  of  all  human  and  social  progress.  This 
takes  the  place  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  organic 
sphere.  It  means  that  individuals  may,  from  the  nature 
of  the  special  particularizations  which  they  make  in 

1  The  questions  as  to  its  continuity  and  direction  are  discussed  in  Chap. 
XIII. 


The  Particularizing  Social  Force          461 

thought,  feeling,  or  action,  Jiave  influence  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  their  number  and  social  status.  It  is  of  the 
essence  of  a  true  thought  to  live,  although,  at  first,  its 
point  of  origin  be  a  single  human  head.  It  gets  itself 
spread  by  social  suggestion,  education,  imitation,  etc.,  and 
then  gets  itself  handed  down  by  social  heredity  to  sub- 
sequent generations.  The  individual  may  thus  become, 
perhaps  in  his  life,  perhaps  even  before  he  himself  real- 
izes it,  the  centre  of  a  great  social  movement.  His  inven- 
tion may  revolutionize  industry;  his  discovery  may  add 
to  the  resources  of  commerce ;  his  verse  or  scientific 
writing  may  set  the  aspiration  of  a  nation,  or  mark  an  era 
in  the  knowledge  of  mankind. 

306.  Not  only  is  this  the  great  difference  between 
social  and  biological  progress ;  the  reason  of  it  is  also 
not  far  to  seek.  The  limitation  set  in  biology  to  the 
influence  which  an  individual  may  work  on  his  species 
is  the  necessary  limitation  set  by  physical  heredity.  This 
we  saw  to  be  a  necessary  assumption  to  the  law  of  regres- 
sion. The  individual  cannot  make  the  next  generation ; 
he  can  only  make  one-half  of  a  single  family  in  the  next 
generation.  And  even  that  family  is  subject  to  the  law 
of  variations.  If  the  genius  has  only  one  son,  that  son 
may  be  an  idiot,  and  is  likely  to  be  little  better  than  the 
average  man.  Further,  the  mate  which  the  genius  chooses 
is  equally  responsible  with  himself  for  the  next  genera- 
tion, and  he  does  not  always  exercise  the  highest  judg- 
ment of  genius  in  choosing  his  mate !  All  these  things, 
which  might  be  carried  out  in  many  points  of  interesting 
.  detail,  show  the  reason  of  the  necessary  limitation  of  the 
individual's  influence  in  biology.  The  'sport,'  however 
valuable  he  may  be,  even  to  the  point  of  supreme  adapta- 


462  The  Social  Forces 

tion,  is  always  in  biology  a  caprice,  never  a  permanent 
possession.  He  is  of  no  more  value,  from  the  purely 
biological  point  of  view,  than  any  other  individual  what- 
ever ;  for  he  is  averaged  up  with  all  the  others  in  the  long 
run,  and  the  special  strain  which  his  gifts  represent  is 
finally  measured  by  that  and  not  by  him. 

But  it  is  of  the  essence  of  the  sort  of  organization 
which  intelligent  and  reflective  social  co-operation  have 
ushered  in,  that  it  banishes  once  for  all  this  paralyzing 
limitation,  due  to  physical  heredity.  The  genius  as  a 
biological  specimen  has,  of  course,  to  submit  to  it,  and  to 
impose  it  upon  those  who  follow  him ;  but  the  thought  of 
the  genius  does  not  have  to,  nor  do  the  institutions  and 
enactments  in  which  his  thought  and  sentiment  take  social 
form.  The  genius  himself  has  to  be  made  over  each 
time  we  want  him,  and  the  making  of  him  a  second  time 
is  the  problem  which  no  man  can  solve.  But  his  thought 
and  sentiment  are  made  once  for  all.  His  thought  rings 
down  the  ages  in  human  ears  when  his  natural  sons  have 
gone  back  to  their  dust,  and  when  a  hundred  generations 
have  exercised  themselves  to  develop  the  lines  of  his  mag- 
nificent achievement.  Who  can  trace  the  line  of  physical 
heredity  from  Aristotle  to  us  ?  And  what  its  value  if  we 
could?  But  who  cannot  trace  the  strain  in  our  social 
heredity  which  comes  from  him  ?  And  so  I  say  that  this 
is  the  great  essential  thing  about  social  truth,  as  opposed 
to  biological  fact :  /'/  leaps  the  bounds  of  physical  heredity. 

We   saw   that  'social    heredity'    is   substituted   for   it. 
First,   man   had   to   become    intelligent  —  in   the   widest 
sense  of   that   term  —  in  order  to  think  and   to   subdue . 
nature ;  and  ethical,  in  order  not  to  kill  off,  but  to  utilize, 
the   thinker.     With   these   two   requisites,   together  with 


The  Particularizing  Social  Force          463 

the  forms  of  sanction  to  which  they  give  rise,  and 
with  the  institutions  in  which  all  these  things  have  been 
embodied,  he  becomes  the  lord  of  nature  that  he  is  —  and 
of  himself.  But  the  first  conquest  of  nature  that  man  had 
to  make,  in  order  to  start  his  history  in  the  line  which  we 
call  social,  was  the  conquest  over  the  limitations  of  physi- 
cal heredity.  His  first  revolt  —  and  the  one  in  which  all 
his  subsequent  protests  were  included  —  was  his  revolt 
against  this  biological  law.1 

307.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  again  that  this  is 
true  not  only  of  the  man  of  great  power,  but  also  of  all 
men,  and  of  many  animals  which  have  considerable  social 
tradition  as  well  as  social  instincts.  This  form  of  revolt 
has  become  instinctive,  itself  fixed  by  the  law  of  varia- 
tions first,  and  by  the  law  of  social  heredity  afterwards. 
The  social  man  is  the  most  natural  man ;  the  social  insti- 
tutions are  the  avenues  of  his  most  normal  life.  So  every 
man  of  us  is  thinking,  feeling,  acting,  —  particularizing,  — 
for  all  time.  We  are  acting  up  to  our  capacity  to  make 
the  social  heritage  of  our  descendants ;  and  the  great 
man,  the  statesman,  the  poet,  the  scientific  genius,  does 
no  more.  His  influence,  indeed,  is  what  it  is  only  as  we 

1  The  question  often  asked  whether  the  other  assumption  which  biological 
evolution  makes  —  the  assumption  of  a  struggle  for  existence  with  the  survival 
of  the  fittest — does  not  hold  of  ideas  as  such;  i.e.,  of  the  particularizations 
made  by  individuals,  has  already  been  answered  (Chap.  V.,  §  4).  We  saw  that 
the  use  of  such  an  analogy  for  the  construction  of  a  social  theory  analogous  to 
the  biological  theory,  is  not  legitimate,  seeing  that  the  correlative  principle, 
that  of  physical  heredity,  which  is  necessary  in  biology  to  the  operation  of  the 
struggle  with  survival,  does  not  hold.  Ideas  are  propagated  socially  by  the 
imitative  'generalization  '  described  next  below  (§  3).  The  failure  to  recog- 
nize that  the  two  principles  must  go  together  in  biology,  and  that  at  least 
one  of  them  fails  in  social  evolution,  is  responsible  for  much  of  the  loose  em- 
ployment of  the  biological  analogy  in  the  literature  of  sociology.  On  various 
sorts  of  selection,  see  Sects.  40,  note,  120  f.,  and  Appendix  B. 


464  The  Social  Forces 

common  men  maintain  the  level  from  which  he  acts.  He 
must  have  us,  as  we  hope  to  have  him.  And  besides  this 
reciprocal  influence  between  him  and  us,  we  are,  besides, 
ourselves  acting  the  genius,  the  hero,  the  great  lawgiver, 
to  our  children,  our  pupils,  our  comrades,  who  are  less 
privileged  or  less  gifted  than  we  are. 

308.  Fourth,  this  particularizing  tendency  explains  the 
oppositions  between  the  personal  and  the  social  sanctions. 
The  general  fact  of  social  organization  involves  two  great 
tendencies,  represented  in  the  individual  by  the  sanctions 
called  intelligent  and  ethical.  The  intelligent  sanction 
very  quickly  runs,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  child,  —  and 
in  very  glaring  social  examples,  such  as  the  professional 
criminal,  —  to  an  extreme,  giving  results  which  are  unsocial 
or  anti-social.  But  we  saw  that  the  very  growth  of  the 
intelligence  in  the  way  of  general  knowledge,  with  its 
sentiments  of  social,  ethical,  and  religious  value,  gives  rise 
to  a  new  set  of  sanctions.  And  it  is  with  these  latter, 
especially,  that  the  social  sanctions  as  such  (as  voiced  by 
the  community  and  its  institutions)  are  identified.  So 
there  arises  the  conflict  among  the  man's  own  sanctions, 
which  shows  itself  as  an  intellectual  revolt  of  the  indi- 
vidual against  society.  It  simply  means  that  his  particu- 
larizations  cannot  be  assimilated  to  the  generalizations 
which  society  has  made ;  and  either  he  must  be  sup- 
pressed, or  society  must  be  in  so  far  reformed  in  those 
respects  which  his  thought  represents.  The  cases  cited 
of  the  development  of  extravagant  intelligent  claims,  as 
against  the  prevalent  judgment  of  the  community, — the 
case  of  the  criminal,  and  often  of  the  child,  —  illustrate 
particularizations  in  respect  of  a  certain  sort  of  thinking 
more  or  less  free  from  ethical  restraint. 


The  Generalizing  Force  465 

Moreover,  there  is  the  variation  on  the  other  side  — 
individuals  who,  from  conscientious  scruples,  will  not 
obey  law ;  or  who  rebel  against  the  ethical  standards  of 
the  community  in  favour  possibly  of  a  higher  and  purer 
morality  than  that  which  society  has  yet  attained.  These 
conflicts,  so  far  from  being  a  sign  of  disorder  and  a  retreat 
of  dualism  in  social  theory,  are  really  incidents  in  that 
larger  interplay  of  forces  which  constitutes  social  progress. 
No  psychologist  needs  to  be  told  that  the  particular  is  a  par- 
ticular only  by  reason  of  its  partial  conflict  with  the  gen- 
eral ;  and  the  more  the  conflict,  while  yet  it  is  a  particular 
and  not  a  disparate  case,  the  greater  its  value  from  the 
point  of  view  no  less  of  the  possibilities  of  the  general, 
than  from  that  of  the  realities  of  single  fact.  This  fact 
of  conflict  will  be  considered,  however,  a  little  more  in 
detail  when  we  have  looked  closely  at  the  second  of  our 
social  forces,  —  the  generalization  made  by  society  itself. 

§  3.    The  Generalizing  Force 

309.  Coming  to  the  exposition  of  the  so-called  force 
which  society  represents  as  over  against  the  individual, 
the  caution  against  falling  into  a  dualism  of  view  is  per- 
haps unnecessary ;  the  development  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ter is  against  it.  The  only  dualism  which  is  in  any  way 
justified  is  the  dualism  of  fact  seen  in  the  opposition  of 
sanctions  now  indicated ;  and  that,  we  are  going  on  to 
see,  is  only  an  incident  of  a  more  profound  unity  pervad- 
ing the  entire  social  movement.  The  tendencies  seen 
in  the  outcome  of  social  evolution,  as  embodied  in  institu- 
tions, are,  however,  in  such  contrast  with  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  particular  individuals,  that  further  remarks 

2H 


466  The  Social  Forces 

may  first  be  made  upon  the  contrast.  Bearing  in  mind 
the  characteristics  of  what  has  been  called  the  '  particu- 
larizing' function  of  the  individual,  certain  truths  come 
into  view  on  the  side  of  society.  These  are  covered  by 
the  phrase  '  generalization.' 

310.  First,  society  generalizes  ivhat  tlie  individual  has 
already  particularised.  This  is  simply  to  say  that  society 
is  not  an  original  thinker,  feeler,  or  doer.  It  would  be 
going  too  far,  as  is  so  often  done,  to  say  that  society  is 
only  an  aggregate  of  individuals,  and  so  can  originate 
nothing ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  the  bloodiest  scenes  of 
history,  to  say  nothing  of  less  exceptional  things,  have 
been  the  immediate  work  of  certain  social  wholes ;  work 
for  which  no  individual  in  the  group  would  have  found 
sanction,  if  he  had  acted  alone.  The  works  of  the  writers 
on  collective  psychology  in  recent  years  have  made  this 
plain.  The  social  agent  is  not  the  aggregate  of  the 
individuals  in  the  group. 

But  it  is  true,  nevertheless,  that  the  thought  on  which 
the  whole  group  acts  is  present  in  the  minds  of  the  indi- 
viduals, as  far  as  it  is  thought  at  all ;  and  it  is  generally 
true,  also,  that  the  crowd  does  not  think  thoughts  nor  do 
deeds  which  the  individuals  might  not  have  done  when 
acting  under  the  influence  of  strong  suggestion,  had  the 
suggestion  been  otherwise  administered.  There  are  really 
several  cases  of  this  relation  between  the  individual's 
thoughts  and  society's ;  but  I  can  only  dwell  upon  the 
one  general  case  which  is  normal  and  of  special  interest 
to  us  now  seeing  that  it  includes  all  the  rest. 

The  things  which  are  taken  up  by  society  and  incorpo- 
rated in  permanent  form,  as  its  acquisitions,  are  usually 
the  outcome  of  the  severest  thinking  of  the  ablest  indi- 


The  Generalizing  Force  467 

viduals.  In  all  the  spheres  of  human  activity  and  know- 
ledge, new  ideas  come  from  those  most  capable,  from 
endowment  and  education  in  the  normal  resources  which 
society  already  offers,  of  making  real  advances  in  the 
understanding  of  nature,  in  the  application  of  their  know- 
ledge in  useful  ways,  and  in  the  achievement  of  the  highest 
and  most  ideal  forms  of  poetic,  artistic,  and  sentimental 
insight.  These  are  society's  normal  teachers. 

What  society  then  does  is  to  generalize  the  particular 
thought  or  value.  A  new  scheme  of  legislation  —  let  us 
say  of  taxation  —  is  thought  out  by  one  man.  It  must 
be  made  a  general  thought  in  the  group  of  fellow-citizens 
or  fellow-legislators.  This  is  one  form  of  generalization 
of  the  thought.  It  does  not  retain  just  the  form  in  each 
mind  that  it  originally  had.  The  essence  of  the  thought 
is  its  general,  workable  part.  Then,  in  order  that  it  may 
be  made  effective  for  the  good  of  society,  only  what  is 
thus  found  general  is  actually  carried  out.  So  the  form 
in  which  such  a  thought  is  realized  in  law  —  or,  in  other 
cases,  in  institution,  ceremony,  or  custom  —  is  seldom  just 
that  which  the  originator  conceived.  The  idea  or  essen- 
tial contrivance  remains  the  same ;  but  it  is  given  a  form 
which  fits  it  to  the  thought  of  many  thinkers  and  to  the 
practical  needs  which  they  bring  to  it. 

Then,  after  such  a  first  generalization,  new  particulari- 
zations  follow  in  the  minds  of  other  able  men ;  as  note 
the  '  improvements '  through  which  each  practical  inven- 
tion goes,  after  its  first  clumsy  embodiment  in  a  machine. 

Of  course,  different  inventions,  and  different  thoughts 
of  all  kinds,  differ  greatly,  both  in  their  nature  and  in 
their  social  fate;  and  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the 
thought  of  each  thinker  necessarily  undergoes  improve- 


468  The  Social  Forces 

ment  before  it  will  work  socially.  But  what  seems  to 
be  true  is  that,  when  looked  at  from  the  side  of  the  final 
institution  which  is  established  in  consequence  of  the 
thought  of  a  great  thinker,  the  thought  is  such  that  the 
average  man  can  take  it  in,  cling  to  it,  and  act  on  it. 
In  political  life  principles  have  to  be  put  concretely  and 
with  many  illustrations,  in  order  to  get  convincing  force 
with  the  voters.  Social  measures  which  present  least 
complication  and  the  widest  generality  of  application 
have  most  chance  of  adoption.  The  art  work  which 
strikes  some  general  sentiment,  or  has  so  general  a  mean- 
ing that  the  average  man  may  understand  and  feel  its 
beauty,  has  most  popular  appreciation.  All  this  seems 
to  show  that  the  pinnacle  of  singularity  on  which  the 
original  thinker  stands  cannot  be  scaled  by  the  members 
of  the  community  to  which  his  thought  appeals.  But,  on 
the  contrary,  his  thought  has  to  be  assimilated  to  the 
great  stock  of  established  truths  which  society  already 
understands  and  values.  The  result  is  that  the  new 
thought  is  'pared'  down,  so  to  speak;  its  boldest  and 
most  novel  outlines  are  obscured ;  and  its  form  of  final 
embodiment  is  that  general  form  in  which  it  can  be  most 
widely  appreciated  and  applied. 

311.  Second,  it  is  also  to  be  noted  that  it  is  only  as 
this  generalizing  process  is  adequately  done  that  the 
permanence  of  the  new  elements  in  the  social  life  is 
secured ;  for  the  matters  of  new  sanction  secured  by 
the  thought  and  struggle  of  one  generation  have  to  be 
assimilated  by  the  next ;  have  to  come  under  the  peda- 
gogical sanction  enforced  upon  the  sons  and  daughters. 
And  only  the  general  conceptions  which  underlie  institu- 
tions can  thus  be  made  matter  of  pedagogical  sanction. 


The  Generalizing  Force  469 

The  singularities  of  thought,  the  particularities  as  such, 
which  belong  to  a  single  thinker,  and  even  those  which 
such  a  thinker  may  succeed  in  imposing  on  his  own  gen- 
eration, cannot  live  on  in  succeeding  generations  if  these 
succeeding  generations  are  to  exercise  the  same  preroga- 
tives of  thought.  The  later  generations  can  only  build  on 
those  general  principles  or  ideas  which  the  earlier  thought 
out  and  wrought  into  the  structure  of  the  social  fabric. 

Illustrations  of  this  are  plentiful.  For  example,  the 
growth  of  the  democratic  idea  in  modern  times  shows  all 
the  vicissitudes  to  be  expected  from  the  varying  degrees 
of  thoroughness  with  which  this  people  or  that  have  done 
their  generalizing.  In  France  the  attempt  was  made  to 
apply  at  once,  in  all  its  naked  particularity,  the  demo- 
cratic philosophy  of  one  man  and  one  school  of  academic 
thinkers.  The  result  showed  the  absolute  impossibility  of 
building  all  at  once  a  new  social  fabric  whose  foundation 
should  be  the  thought  of  '  freedom,  equality,  and  fraternity ' ; 
a  thought  having  little  connection  with  the  earlier  devel- 
opment of  French  national  life.  Both  the  difficulties  which 
are  pointed  out  above  appeared,  and  each  was  insurmount- 
able. First,  there  was  no  adequate  framework,  in  law  or 
social  convention,  for  the  new  idea  ;  no  precedents,  no  safe- 
guards, no  standards  to  which  to  appeal.  In  this  state  of 
things,  the  particularity  of  the  thought  saves  it  only  so 
long  as  it  is  not  in  the  ascendant,  or  so  long  as  no  new 
particularity  of  a  new  thinker  comes  to  make  a  stronger 
social  appeal  to  the  suggestiveness  of  the  people.  And, 
second,  the  other  defect  appeared  most  glaringly,  —  the 
lack  of  adequate  pedagogical  sanctions  for  the  new  gen- 
erations of  democratic  France.  One-man  institutions  can- 
not live,  simply  because  one  man  cannot  secure  the  sue- 


470  Tlie  Social  Forces 

cession  of  his  thought,  as  he  can  that  of  his  family.  In  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  republican  life  in  France,  we  see  a  nation 
seeking  here  and  there  for  something  to  teach  its  sons. 

To  this,  the  growth  of  the  democratic  idea  in  England 
presents  the  most  instructive  contrast.  Successive  ad- 
vances in  the  idea  of  popular  constitutional  government 
have  been  successfully  realized,  just  by  the  process  of 
social  generalization  of  which  we  are  speaking.  Piece  by 
piece,  the  stones  from  the  quarry  of  republican  govern- 
ment and  manhood  suffrage  have  been  set  into  the  fabric 
of  monarchy;  but  in  so  apt  and  gradual  a  way  that  the 
whole  stands  a  monument  at  once  to  the  great  thoughts 
of  great  men  —  as  great  as  Rousseau  and  Voltaire  —  and 
to  genuine  social  progress. 

France  has  reached  stable  democratic  government  at  the 
cost  of  dear-bought  experience  of  revolution,  anarchy,  and 
misrule ;  England  has  attained  the  same,  but  by  growth. 

In  art  also,  and  even  in  mechanical  invention,  the  same 
is  seen.  A  school  of  painting  is  dominated  by  the  style 
of  a  great  man ;  his  is  the  original  thought,  or  manner,  or 
style.  But  imitators  of  him  do  not  constitute  his  school. 
Each  artist  who  learns  from  him  must  generalize  the 
thought  or  manner  of  the  master,  by  assimilation  to  the 
whole  tradition  of  art  and  to  what  is  original  and  great  in 
himself.  So  in  the  school  there  still  arise  new  masters. 
The  rest  are  copyists.  And  in  the  perpetuity  of  the 
original  artist's  contribution  to  the  art  movement  of  the 
world,  there  must  be  that  general  core  of  method  or  idea 
which  may  be  made  the  matter  of  pedagogical  discipline 
from  generation  to  generation.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
purely  particular  is  the  eccentric  and  the  temporary ;  and 
although  advance  is  at  first  through  some  one  thinker's 


The  Generalizing  Force  471 

particularization,  still  only  that  part  of  his  particulariza- 
tion  which  may  be  generalized  becomes  the  real  gain  of 
society  and  of  the  world. 

312.  Third,  tlie  real  progress  of  society  is  measured, 
not  by  the  individual's  particularizations  directly,  but  by 
society's  generalizations.  Here,  again,  the  analogy  drawn 
from  biology  may  help  us.  The  real  measure  of  a  species' 
attainment  is  the  position  of  the  species  as  such  in  the 
scale  of  life,  in  respect  to  this  character  or  that.  The 
individual  is  judged  with  reference  to  his  degree  of  con- 
formity to  the  average  attainment  of  the  species.  If  he 
be  too  great  a  departure  from  the  type,  he  is  a  '  sport ' ; 
and  this,  because  he  is  less  likely  to  perpetuate  his  en- 
dowment, by  reason  of  the  general  tendency  of  physical 
heredity  to  regress  to  the  mean.  Now  we  have  seen,  it 
is  true,  that  social  progress  is  not  under  the  limitation  of 
physical  heredity  in  this  respect;  but  yet  it  is  true  also 
that  the  form  of  heredity  under  which  it  does  proceed  — 
social  heredity,  the  handing  down  through  pedagogical 
agencies,  etc.  —  has  a  limitation  analogous  to  this  in  its 
own  sphere.1  For  just  as  a  physical  variation  which  is  too 
far  from  the  mean  tends  to  be  swamped  in  the  retrograde 
outcome  of  heredity,  so  the  thought  which  is  too  wide 
a  departure  from  tradition,  custom,  convention,  fails  of 
assimilation  in  the  popular  mind,  and  so  gets  swamped 
despite  its  value.  The  great  thinkers  are  themselves  a 
better  measure  of  the  possibilities  of  a  given  social  group 
than  are  the  particular  thoughts  which  this  or  that  one  of 
them  may  think.  For  given  the  thinkers,  there  is  always 
the  chance  of  thoughts :  they  cannot  help  thinking.  But 

1  Yet  it  is  only  analogous.  The  real  process  is  akin  to  mental '  generali- 
zation.' 


472  The  Social  Forces 

given  a  thought,  its  final  failure  is  its  death.  Interesting 
questions,  in  this  connection,  to  be  answered  possibly  by 
statistics,  are :  How  many  really  great  men  does  this  or 
that  nation  or  community  produce  in  each  generation  ? 
and  is  there  any  connection  between  the  number  of  the 
great  men  and  the  advance  in  the  general  level  of  culture 
which  we  call  social  progress  ?  Both  are  very  complicated 
questions,  and  capable  only  of  relative  solution,  from  the 
ambiguity  of  the  phrase  'really  great.' 

The  point  of  interest  now  is  this  :  that  an  idea  or  thought 
—  a  particularization  of  one  mind  —  may  fail  of  the  neces- 
sary generalization  on  the  social  side.  It  frequently  so 
happens.  This  means  that  there  is  a  limit  in  the  matter 
of  the  perpetuation  of  a  social  influence  through  social 
heredity,  as  there  is  also  the  limit  mentioned  in  natural 
heredity.  Too  original  a  thought  is  a  social  'sport.'  It 
is  often  still-born.  So  the  test  of  the  real  elements  of 
national  or  social  life  is  to  be  found  on  the  side  of  its  gen- 
eralizations, —  its  established  institutions,  its  customs,  its 
creeds,  its  conventions,  —  and  not  on  the  side  of  the  special 
monuments  to  the  geniuses  which  it  has  produced.  It  is 
quite  a  mistake,  for  example,  to  reconstruct  Greek  national 
life  from  Greek  heroic  poetry  ;  or  to  take  the  '  Thoughts ' 
of  Epictetus  or  Pascal  as  a  measure  of  the  moral  intui- 
tions of  the  Romans  or  French.  As  was  said  above, 
the  Liberte,  Egalit6,  Fraternit£,  was  ideal  enough  as  a 
motto  for  democracy  for  all  time ;  but  the  events  imme- 
diately succeeding  the  triumph  of  its  enthusiasts  did  not 
reflect  the  ideality  of  life  which  one  should  expect  from  its 
realization.  And  does  the  world  generalize  this  motto  yet 
anywhere?  —  as  much  as  our  individual  pulses  are  stirred 
when  we  hear  it  pronounced ! 


The  Generalizing  Force  473 

313.  Fourth,  the  advance  on  the  social  side,  thus  tested 
and  measured,  must  result  in  a  constant  suppression  of  the 
individual's  sanctions,  as  far  as  they  remain  in  conflict  with 
those  of  society.  If  the  individual's  thoughts,  sentiments, 
protests,  recommendations,  —  having  his  own  personal 
sanction,  —  fail  of  the  sort  of  social  generalization  which 
we  see  to  be  necessary  to  their  perpetuity,  then,  ipso  facto, 
they  are  not  fruitful,  and  they  go  on  to  be  eliminated. 
They  are  not  factors  of  worth  in  the  body  social,  however 
they  may  recur  in  individuals  and  seek  a  social  outlet. 
This  suppression  of  thought  arises  even  when  the  indi- 
viduals themselves  are  not  suppressed.  We  boycott  books, 
refute  '  silver  fallacies,'  suppress  popular  illusions  by  '  cam- 
paigns of  education.'  The  general  drift  of  social  evolution 
is  from  the  past,  and  has  been  set  by  the  prevailing 
contributions  of  innumerable  thinkers,  all  assimilated  or 
generalized  in  a  great  body  of  accepted  truth  and  tradi- 
tion. A  new  idea  may  modify  it  very  essentially,  as  we 
saw ;  and  this  is  the  measure  of  the  greatness  of  an  idea, 
the  extent  to  which  it  does  modify  tradition.  But  by  so 
doing,  by  being  thus  generalized  and  made  of  social 
value,  such  an  idea  secures  the  social  sanction  and  so 
ceases  to  derive  its  influence  over  the  individuals  of  the 
social  group  solely  through  the  personal  presence  or 
authority  of  the  single  thinker.  He  may  die,  but  his 
thought  lives  in  the  institutions  which  all  men  possess. 
So  the  sanction  passes  from  the  personal  to  the  social 
sphere ;  and  then,  by  the  education  of  the  children,  it 
passes  again  from  the  social  to  the  personal  sphere. 
All  other  thoughts  or  courses  of  action  which  the  indi- 
vidual originates  lapse  and  are  lost. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  the  soqial  rise  of  an  idea  may 


474  The  Social  Forces 

be  very  gradual ;  it  may  have  its  ebb  and  flow ;  its  sup- 
porters may  increase  and  decrease ;  and  yet  it  may  finally 
prevail,  and  secure  social  confirmation.  Indeed,  this  is  the 
history  of  most  social  reforms  and  of  many  institutions. 
Yet  this  does  not  affect  the  general  truth  that  the  indi- 
vidual is  the  waning  factor,  and  the  social  the  waxing 
factor,  all  the  way  through.  The  idea  rises  and  gets  a 
social  chance,  just  in  proportion  as  it  takes  on  the  gener- 
alized form  which  makes  it  socially  available.  All  manner 
of  vicissitudes  may  mark  its  passage  from  the  purely  per- 
sonal to  the  accomplished  social  form.  But  when  it  does 
get  social  embodiment,  then  it  is  permanent  and  effective 
in  human  life,  not  because  this  or  that  individual  gives  it 
his  private  sanction,  but  because  it  is  the  property  of  the 
community  as  such. 

The  thought  of  this  section  gets  its  main  interest  from 
the  fact  that  from  it  inferences  may  be  drawn  regarding 
the  direction  of  social  progress.  These  inferences  are 
brought  forward  in  the  discussions  of  the  concluding 
chapters. 


CHAPTER   XII 
SOCIAL  MATTER  AND  PROCESS  1 

THE  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  present  in  outline  a  way 
of  conceiving  of  the  general  fact  of  human  social  organiza- 
tion, based  upon  the  foregoing,  and  in  line  with  the  ten- 
dency which  has  proved  itself  fruitful  in  the  last  few 
years,  mainly  in  France ; 2  the  tendency  to  recognize  the 
psychological  character  of  the  motifs  at  work  in  society. 
It  seems  to  me  to  be  a  permanent  advance  that  the  bio- 
logical analogy  is  giving  place  to  a  psychological  analogy, 
and  that  this  is  leading  the  writers  in  so-called  '  sociology ' 
to  examine  the  psychological  processes  which  lie  wrapped 
up  in  the  activities  and  responsibilities  called  social. 

§  i.    Distinction  of  Problems 

314.  The  questions  which  should  concern  the  scientific 
student  of  society  seem  to  me  to  be  two,  each  of  which 

1  Much  of  this  chapter  and  of  the  next  has  been  printed  in  the  Psychological 
Review  (Sept.,  1897),  and,  in  translation,  in  the  Rivista  Italiana  di  Sociologia 
(vol.  I.). 

2  The  reader  may  turn  to  the  very  able  resumes  by  M.  Lapie,  published  in 
the  Revue  de  Metaph.  et  de  Morale  (May,  1895,  and  May,  1896)  under  the  title 
4  L'Annee  Sociologique,'  1894,  1895,  which  are  continued  for  1896  in  the  same 
journal  (July,  1897)  by  M.  F.  Simiand.     See  also  M.  Lacombe's  interesting 
work  De  VHistoire  considere  comme  science,  for  a  justification  of  the  psycho- 
logical point  of  view. 

475 


476  Social  Matter  and  Process 

gets  again  a  twofold  statement.  The  first  question  con- 
cerns the  matter  or  content  of  social  organization  ;  what  is 
it  that  is  organized  ?  —  what  is  it  that  is  passed  about,  dupli- 
cated, made  use  of,  in  society  ?  When  we  speak  of  social 
action  in  its  lowest  terms,  '  what '  leads  to  the  action, 
what  is  the  sort  of  material  which  must  be  there  if  social 
action  is  there  ?  This  question  has  had  very  acute  dis- 
cussion lately  under  the  somewhat  different  statement : 
what  is  the  criterion  or  test  of  a  social  phenomenon  ? 
But  the  question  which  I  ask  under  this  head  is  more 
narrow,  since,  in  all  sorts  of  organization,  a  further  ques- 
tion comes  up  in  addition  to  that  of  the  matter ;  the 
further  question  as  to  the  functional  method  or  process 
of  organization  of  the  social  material,  the  type  of  psycho- 
logical function  which  explains  the  forms  it  takes  on.  It 
has  been  the  weakness  of  many  good  discussions  of  late, 
I  think,  just  that  they  have  not  set  these  questions  sepa- 
rately, i.e.  (i)  the  matter,  and  (2)  the  functional  method  of 
organization  of  the  given  matter. 

Let  us  take  an  illustration.  Some  of  the  animals  show 
a  certain  organization  which  appears  to  be  social.  But  on 
examination,  in  certain  instances,  we  find  that  the  actions 
involved  are  hereditary,  congenital,  each  animal  doing  his 
part,  in  the  main  or  altogether,  simply  because  he  is  born 
to  do  it  whenever  the  organism  becomes  ripe  for  these 
actions  under  the  stimulation  of  his  environment.  Now 
let  us  contrast  with  this  the  intelligent  co-operative  per- 
formance of  the  same  actions  by  a  group  of  men  or 
children  who  deliberately  join  to  do  them  in  common.  In 
the  two  cases  it  is  clear  that  the  psychological  content  is 
different;  one  being  a  biological  and  instinctive,  the  other 
a  psychological  and  acquired,  action  The  results  to  the 


Distinction  of  Problems  477 

observer  may  be  the  same,  and  the  question  may  still 
remain  as  to  whether  the  method  or  type  of  function  be  the 
same  or  no ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  psychological 
content  is  different.  These  two  questions  may  therefore 
be  distinguished  at  the  outset  with  so  much  justification. 

315.  But  each  of  these  two  questions  sets  a  twofold  re- 
quirement. If  we  assume  that  the  distinction  between 
Habit  (with  its  relative  fixity  of  function)  and  Accommo- 
dation (with  its  relative  plasticity  of  function,  as  seen  in 
all  progress  in  learning  or  acquisition)  holds  of  society, 
then  both  the  matter  and  the  method  or  process  of  social 
organization  must  allow  of  these  two  modes,  and  working 
together  must  also  produce  them.  If,  for  example,  we  take 
an  individual  and  find  that  he  has  a  habit  of  acting  in  a 
certain  way,  and  that  at  the  same  time  he  also  improves 
upon  his  action  from  day  to  day,  we  yet  say  that  the 
action  remains  in  a  sense  the  same  in  its  content  or  mean- 
ing throughout  the  entire  series,  from  the  fixed  habit  to 
the  skilled  variation.  Our  determination  of  the  content  of 
the  action  must  have  reference  to  just  the  possibility  of  the 
entire  series  of  actions,  from  fixed  repetitions  by  habit 
to  the  extreme  variations  of  accommodation,  through  all 
the  intermediate  stages.  In  other  words,  the  fact  of 
growth  by  a  series  of  accommodations  must  be  reckoned 
with  in  all  the  determinations  of  social  content.  And  state- 
ments of  progress  must  go  with  the  definition  of  the  actual 
content  at  any  given  stage  of  social  organization.  In 
other  terms,  the  matter  of  social  life  is  changing  growing 
matter;  and  the  determination  of  it  must  always  take 
account  of  this  character. 

So  also  must  the  theory  of  the  method  of  social  function- 
ing. The  process  of  social  organization  results  in  a  grow- 


478  Social  Matter  and  Process 

ing,  developing  system.  Progress  is  real,  no  matter  what 
its  direction,  provided  it  result  from  the  constant  action  of 
a  uniform  process  of  change  in  a  uniform  sort  of  material. 
This  we  find  in  social  life,  and  this  is  the  prime  require- 
ment of  social  theory  both  in  dealing  with  matter  and  in 
dealing  with  function. 

§  2.    Historical  Theories 

316.  It  may  suffice  to  bring  these  distinctions,  and  the 
problems  which  emerge,  more  clearly  to  the  light  if  we 
note  briefly  some  of  the  later  attempts  to  deal  with  the 
social  organization  from  a  psychological  point  of  view.1 
I  shall  cite  types  of  theory  only,  referring  to  particular 
writers  merely  as  illustrating  these  types  and  without 
going  into  the  details  of  their  positions. 

(l)  The  Imitation  Theory \  illustrated  by  M.  Tarde. 
This  view  of  social  organization  has  very  much  to  commend 
it  from  the  point  of  view  of  functional  method ;  indeed,  as 
appears  in  the  earlier  chapters,2  I  think  imitation  is  the 
true  type  of  social  function,  and  the  theory  which  ade- 

1  As  distinguished  from  mechanical  and  biological  theories.  The  current 
metaphysical  theory  is  spoken  of  later  on  (Sect.  331).  The  biological 
'  theory '  so  called,  is,  in  my  view,  merely  a  collection  of  more  or  less  apt 
analogies,  to  which  M.  Novikow  has  now  added  the  new  one  which  finds 
with  '  intellectual  elite '  in  society  the  '  sensorium  social^  and  M.  Lilienfeld 
that  which  likens  mob  frenzy  to  the  hysterical  fit  of  a  female.  As  to  M. 
Simiand's  suggestion  that  the  rich  are  society's  adipose  tissue,  that  priests  also 
represent  fat,  and  that  the  police  force  are  the  social  phagocytes  which  eat  up 
wandering  criminal  cells  —  admitting  all  of  them,  still  in  the  words  of  the  last 
named  writer,  "  yw'r  avons-notu  appris?  Analogie?  —  elle  ne  prouve  rittt." 
The  biological  analogy  is  treated  seriously,  however,  later  on  (Chap.  XIII.).  Pos- 
sibly the  best  detailed  treatment  of  all  the  facts  of  the  organic  analogy  is  in 
Re"ne  Worms'  Organisme  et  Societe  (Paris,  1897). 

*  And  more  explicitly  in  §  4  of  this  chapter  (Sect.  334).  M.  Tarde's  expo* 
sition  is  in  his  Lti  I.ois  <U  F  Imitation. 


Historical  Theories  479 

quately  develops  it  will  give  possibly  the  final  solution  of 
the  question.  As  a  complete  explanation  of  society,  how- 
ever, it  fails  signally,  since  it  gives  no  answer  to  the 
question  of  matter.  M.  Tarde  does  not  tell  us  what  is 
inn : table,  what  is  capable,  through  imitation,  of  becoming 
fixed  as  social  habit,  and  also  of  being  progressively  modi- 
fied in  the  forms  of  social  progress.  He  does  seem  to 
become  more  aware  of  the  need  of  answering  this  ques- 
tion in  his  later  work,  La  Logique  sociale,  and  introduces 
certain  elements  of  content  such  as  'beliefs  and  desires,' 
to  supply  the  lack.  This,  however,  means  simply  a  de- 
parture from  his  earlier  theory,  in  which  the  phenomenon 
of  imitation  was  treated  as  an  answer  to  the  question  qitest 
ce  qiiune  socittt1? 

Apart,  indeed,  from  M.  Tarde's  personal  views,  it  may 
be  said  that  the  case  of  imitation  at  its  purest  is  just 
the  case  in  which  the  social  vanishes.  Imagine  a  room- 
full  of  parrots  imitating  one  another  in  regular  sequence 
around  the  area  and  let  them  keep  it  up  ad  infinitum, 
and  with  as  much  individual  variation  as  they  may; 
where  is  the  social  bond  among  the  parrots?  In  so  far 
as  the  imitation  is  exact,  in  this  case  a  thing  of  con- 
genital instinct,  is  so  far  we  might  substitute  tuning-forks 
for  the  parrots,  and  let  them  vibrate  together  after  striking 
one  of  them  a  sharp  blow.  Indeed,  in  his  treatment  of 
the  final  nature  of  imitation  in  his  Lois  de  limitation, 
M.  Tarde  brings  it  into  a  sort  of  cosmic  correlation  with 
undulatory  repetition  in  physics.  I  cannot  see  that  the 
mere  presence  of  imitation  would  avail  anything,  without 
tacit  or  explicit  assumptions  of  two  kinds :  first,  that  the 
material  of  social  organization  is  essentially  imitable  ma- 
terial ;  and  second,  that  through  imitation  this  material 


480  Social  Matter  and  Process 

would  take  on  the  forms  of  organization   actually  found 
in  society. 

317.  (2)  Another  type  of  theory  which  is  open  to  much 
the  same  criticism  is  represented  by  the  '  constraint '  view 
of  M.  Durkheim,1  and  what  is  called  '  subordination '  by 
other  writers.  To  this  view  the  essence  of  social  organi- 
zation is  the  constraining  influence  of  one  person  upon 
others,  due  to  authority,  social  place,  etc.  It  is  in  line 
with  the  extreme  '  suggestion '  theory  of  society,  which 
makes  the  crowd  acting  under  the  suggestion  of  the 
strongest  personalities  in  it  the  type  of  social  organiza- 
tion as  such  :  a  theory  which  we  have  already  criticised 
above.2  The  weakness  of  this  type  of  doctrine  appears 
from  the  striking  analogy  from  hypnotic  suggestion  which 
its  advocates  employ.  And  the  common  element  of  such 
a  view  with  that  of  M.  Tarde  is  evidenced  in  the  use  of 
the  same  analogy  by  the  latter.  The  analogy  seems  to 
me  to  be  quite  correct ;  to  this  view  the  extreme  and  the 
purest  instance  of  social  organization  would  be  hypnotic 
rapport.  Here  constraint  is  well-nigh  absolute,  imitation 
is  perfect,  subordination  is  unquestionable.  But  it  is 
only  necessary  to  state  this  to  see  that  in  hypnotic  rapport 
the  social  has  completely  evaporated.  There  is  no  place 
for  a  criterion  of  social  material.  The  hypnotic  subject, 
or  the  generally  suggestible  subject,  tends  to  take  all 
suggestions  as  of  approximately  equal  value,  to  obey 
everything,  to  understand  nothing,  to  be  the  same  sort 
of  an  instrument  of  repetition  as  is  the  parrot  or  the 
tuning-fork.  How  there  could  be  any  organization  as 
distinct  from  repetition,  of  progress  as  distinct  from  arbi- 
trary law  or  caprice,  I  am  quite  unable  to  see.  It  may 

1  Revue  Philosophique,  May  and  July,  1894.          *  Chap.  VI.,  §  4. 


Historical  Theories  481 

be,  as  a  matter  of  history,  that  the  first  social  man  became 
so  because  he  was  knocked  down  by  a  stronger,  and  so 
constrained  to  be  his  slave ;  but  further  progress  from 
such  a  state  of  constraint,  in  the  direction  of  co-operation, 
would  be  possible  only  in  proportion  as  there  was  a  '  let- 
up '  or  modification  of  the  one-sided  constraint.  In  other 
words,  constraint  —  or  rather  the  imitation  to  which  it 
may  be  reduced  as  soon  as  it  ceases  to  be  one-sided  and 
becomes  mutual — may  have  been  and  may  continue  to 
be  the  functional  process,  or  method  of  social  life  ;  but  the 
lines  of  progress  actually  made  by  society  would  seem  to 
be  determined  by  certain  inherent  possibilities  of  fruitful 
imitation  and  co-operation  in  some  particular  spheres. 
These  spheres  should  be  defined,  and  that  raises  the  quite 
different  question  of  matter  or  content.  The  constraint 
theorists,  I  know,  take  as  type  of  constraint  not  that  of 
force  but  that  of  suggestion ;  and  it  is  just  this  tendency 
which  brings  their  view  into  line  with  the  imitation  theory 
and  makes  it  available  as  an  important,  but  less  impor- 
tant, contribution  to  that  theory. 

318.  (3)  There  is  another  way  again  of  looking  at  social 
organization,  a  way  which  may  be  called  psychological, 
however,  only  with  some  latitude.  Dr.  Simmel,  of  Berlin, 
may  be  taken  as  representing  it,  in  a  part  of  his  treatment 
of  society.1  It  consists  in  attempting,  by  an  analysis  of 
social  events  and  phenomena,  to  arrive  at  a  statement 
of  the  formal  principles  which  each  section  or  general 
instance  of  social  life  presents.  Such  formal  principles 
are  division  of  labour,  '  subordination,'  co-operation,  etc. 
This  is  a  very  serviceable  undertaking,  I  think,  and 

1  Yet  I  expressly  disclaim  the  intention  of  fully  reflecting,  even  in  this  one 
particular,  the  subtle  and  discriminating  thought  of  Dr.  Simmel. 
21 


482  Social  Matter  and  Process 

must  result  in  a  certain  valid  social  logic ;  a  system  of 
principles  by  which  social  phenomena  may  be  classified 
and  which  may  serve  as  touchstones  in  particular  cases 
of  organization.  The  objection,  however,  to  building  a 
science  of  the  social  life  upon  it  is  just  that  the  principles 
are  formal ;  it  would  be  like  building  the  psychology  of 
concrete  daily  life  upon  the  principles  of  formal  logic. 
Principles  which  get  application  everywhere  are  not  of 
concrete  use  anywhere.  They  also  lack  —  or  the  system 
which  seeks  them  out  lacks  —  the  genetic  point  of  view. 
Granted  the  establishing  of  these  principles  by  the  analy- 
sis of  social  events,  the  question  would  still  remain  as  to 
the  original  form  which  they  showed  in  primitive  societies. 
It  is  easier  to  deal  with  the  simpler,  and  work  up,  than  it 
is  to  reverse  this  procedure ;  and  from  this  point  of  view 
it  would  seem  quite  possible  to  treat  all  such  principles  — 
once  having  solved  the  question  of  social  material  —  as 
developments  from  imitation  and  suggestion.  Apart  from 
this,  however,  the  essential  criticism  to  be  made  upon  this 
type  of  thought  is  that  it  deals  only  with  form  and  func- 
tional method  and  assumes  certain  sorts  of  matter  of  social 
organization.  The  principle  of  division  of  labour,  for  ex- 
ample, assumes  the  conscious  tJionght  involved  in  each 
such  division,  and  its  constant  application  by  the  members 
of  society. 

319.  (4)  Another  class  of  positions  have  the  merit  of 
being  genetic :  those  which  found  the  social  life  of  com- 
munities upon  certain  primitive  emotions,  such  as  sym- 
pathy. These  theories  are  exemplified  by  Mr.  Spencer, 
M.  Novikow,  and  the  English  moral  philosophers.  This 
is  possibly  the  oldest  form  of  social  theory,  having  its 
roots  in  Aristotle ;  so  it  has  all  the  accumulated  authority 


Historical  Theories  483 

of  age.  Its  forms  of  statement  are  also  so  numerous 
that  I  cannot  take  them  up.  From  the  pure  '  sympathy  ' 
theory  we  pass  to  the  '  altruistic  theory '  which  makes 
social  life  a  derivative  of  ethical ;  to  the  '  social  instinct ' 
and  '  native  benevolence '  theories,  which  say  that  man  is 
natively  social,  and  sympathy  and  altruistic  feeling  are 
evidences  of  it;  and  finally  we  reach  the  climax  of  descrip- 
tive vagueness 1  —  in  a  formula  wide  enough  to  include  all 
the  rest — the  'consciousness  of  kind'  recently  propounded 
by  Professor  F.  Giddings. 

As  a  class  it  may  be  said  of  all  these  theories  that  they 
constantly  confuse  the  question  of  functional  method  with 
that  of  the  matter  of  social  organization.  In  regard  to 
method  of  function  the  imitation  theory  comes  in  at  once 
to  supplement  these  earlier  points  of  view. 

Apart  from  this  lack,  it  may  be  said  that  the  life  of 
feeling  and  instinct  does  not  furnish  the  requirements 
of  matter  for  social  organization.  There  are  two  sorts 
of  sympathy,  two  sorts  of  social  instinct,  two  sorts  of 
consciousness  of  kind.  This  appears  when  we  press  the 
requirement  indicated  above :  that  the  matter  of  social 
organization  should  be  such  as  to  allow  the  formation  both 
of  social  habit  and  of  the  adaptations  seen  in  social  accom- 
modation and  growth.  The  life  of  instinct  as  such  and  of 
the  emotions  which  come  with  instinctive  activities — e.g., 
organic  sympathy,  impulsive  altruism,  manifestations  of 
kind  such  as  maternal  affections,  etc.  —  all  these  are  race 
habits.  To  the  degree  in  which  they  fulfil  the  require- 

1  In  the  Preface  to  the  third  edition  of  his  interesting  Principles  of  Sociol- 
ogy, however,  Professor  Giddings  defines  'consciousness  of  kind'  more  in 
terms  of  sympathy,  recognizing  his  kinship  to  Adam  Smith,  whose  views  are 
referred  to  further  below  (Sects.  330,  332).  On  the  genesis  of '  consciousness 
of  kind '  and  sympathy,  see  Appendix  D. 


484  Social  Matter  and.  Process 

ment  that  society  live  by  its  stock  of  habits,  to  that  degree 
do  they  fail  to  enable  society  to  modify  its  habits  and 
grow.  If  we  sympathize  with  each  other  by  pure  instinct, 
and  act  only  on  the  movings  of  sympathy,  new  organiza- 
tion would  be  as  far  off  as  if  we  fought  tooth  and  nail ; 
for  action  would  be  as  capricious.  So  also  merely  to  feel 
socially  inclined  would  not  beget  differential  forms  of 
social  organization.  To  be  conscious  of  others  as  of  the 
same  kind  would  in  itself  not  determine,  in  the  slightest 
degree,  the  sort  of  thought  or  action  which  could  be  fruit- 
fully recognized  and  developed  within  the  habits  of  the 
kind.  If  we  assume  an  adequate  content,  a  common  ma- 
terial ;  in  short,  if  we  assume  social  organization  already 
in  the  groups  which  for  convenience,  after  they  are  made 
up  in  nature,  we  call  kinds,  then  of  course  it  is  the  sim- 
plest thing  in  the  world  to  say  that  what  the  members 
have  in  common  is  their  consciousness  of  kind ;  but  it  is 
no  more  an  explanation  than  is  the  phrase  '  love  of  drink ' 
an  explanation  of  inherited  tendency  to  alcoholism. 

It  is  only  when  we  come  to  see  the  second  or  higher 
sort  of  sympathy,  social  instinct,  consciousness  of  kind, 
etc.,  that  the  requirement  that  social  organization  be  pro- 
gressive becomes  more  apparent,  because  only  there  is 
it  possible  of  fulfilment.  We  do  not  find  instincts  show- 
ing much  organization  apart  from  certain  fixed  and  con- 
genital forms  of  co-operation.  The  higher  emotions  and 
actions  which  arise  when  consciousness  becomes  in  some 
degree  reflective,  as  opposed  to  instinctive,  take  on  aspects 
which  are  differentiated  from  one  another  according  to  the 
mental  content  which  they  accompany.  There  is  a  reflec- 
tive sympathy,  a  reflective  sociality,  a  reflective  conscious- 
ness of  kind,  and  it  is  just  their  value  that  they  now  afford 


Historical  Theories  485 

some  criterion  —  a  material  criterion  —  over  and  above  the 
mere  fact  of  feeling  and  instinct.  This  point  it  is  the 
main  business  of  this  chapter  to  draw  from  our  earlier 
distinctions  and  developments,  so  I  need  not  dwell  upon 
it  here ;  yet  we  see  that  the  theories  which  deal  in  such 
general  descriptions  of  social  organization  as  the  terms 
mentioned  carry,  are  quite  inadequate,  since  they  leave  the 
real  problem  of  matter  unanswered  :  the  problem  of  the 
'  what '  of  social  organization.  We  must  know  the  '  what ' 
of  such  questions  as  "what  does  society  fruitfully  imitate?" 
"  what  feelings  and  acts  of  sympathy  yield  results  of  social 
value  and  permanence?"  "what  is  the  something  found 
sometimes  in  the  consciousness  of  kind  which  in  these 
cases  leads  to  the  sort  pf  progress  characteristic  of  an 
ethical  society  as  opposed,  let  us  say,  to  a  school  of  fish?"1 
Of  course  I  am  not  intending  to  draw  lines,  even  between 
the  ethical  society  and  the  school  of  fish.  It  is  a  further 
question,  after  we  determine  the  what  of  social  organiza- 
tion, to  find  how  far  it  may  be  present,  also,  in  the  behav- 
iour of  the  school  of  fish.  But  what  is  it  ?  —  '  that  is  the 
question.' 

320.  This  brief  characterization  of  theories,  all  of  which 
aim  to  be  psychological,  enables  us  to  see  our  problem. 
I  have  introduced  them  only  for  this  purpose ;  and  the 
inadequacies  of  presentation  will,  I  hope,  not  be  construed 

1  In  my  opinion,  the  nearest  approach  made  by  Professor  Giddings,  for 
example,  to  an  answer  to  this  question  is  in  this  sentence  from  his  Preface 
(3d  ed.,  p.  xii)  :  "  The  simplest  known  or  conceivable  social  state  of  the  mind 
is  a  sympathetic  consciousness  of  resemblance  between  the  self  and  the  not- 
self."  But  I  find  nothing  in  his  detailed  treatment  that  goes  beyond  the  tra- 
ditional sympathy  theory.  In  acknowledging  the  '  protean  modes '  of  the 
'  consciousness  of  kind,'  Professor  Giddings  seems  to  me  to  be  casting  about 
for  some  material  criterion  of  what  is  social. 


486  Social  Matter  and  Process 

as  inadequacies  of  appreciation.  The  way  the  emerging 
problems  appear,  in  consequence  of  our  review  so  far, 
may  be  shown  in  certain  more  formal  statements  to  which 
the  remainder  of  the  chapter  may  be  addressed. 

(1)  The  determination  of  phenomena  as  social  is  only 
possible  under  the  twofold  requirement  as  to  matter  and 
functional  method.      To  fail  in  either  of  these  is  to  fail 
entirely ;   on  the  one  side  it  would  be  like  determining 
life  by  morphology  alone,  with  no  necessary  exclusion  of 
crystals  and  ploughshares,  provided  they  were  the  right 
shape ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  by  physiology  alone,  which 
would  not  exclude  a  cunningly  devised  india-rubber  heart 
or  an  air-pump  breathing  machine,  provided  it  worked. 

(2)  There  is  entire  justification  for  the  distinction  urged 
by  Tonnies  between  what  have  been  called  in   English 
respectively  'colonies'  and   'societies.'1     Tonnies   distin- 
guishes between  the   Gemeinschaft  and  the   Gesellschaft. 
The  difference  —  to  put  it  in  my  own  way,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  current  psychological  and  biological  distinc- 
tion —  is  this,  i.e.,  between  the  relatively  unvarying,  rela- 
tively   definite,    and    relatively    unconscious    organization 
which    has  its  extreme   instance  in   animal   instinct,  and 
the  relatively  varying,  progressive,  plastic,  and  conscious 
organization  seen  in  human  life.     I  shall  distinguish  these 
types  as  companies*  and   societies.     Later  on    the   more 

1  Durkheim's  development  of  the  distinction  seems  nearer  to  that  of  the 
text,  however,  than  Tonnies'. 

2  The  word  '  community '  might  be  used  for  this,  as  a  translation  of  Gemein- 
schaft; but  that  word  has  another  significance  in  English.     The  term 'colony' 
is  also  inappropriate,  I  think,  for  a  similar  reason.     Colony  has  the  biological 
meanings  of  (i)  a  group  of  cells  making  up  a  tissue  or  an  organism,  and  (2) 
a  mass  of  low  organisms  held  together  without  vital  union;  and  also  its  well- 
known  politico-social  meaning. 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        487 

essential  difference  appears  that  while  in  companies  the 
individuals  feel  and  act  alike,  in  societies  the  individuals 
also  think  alike.1 

(3)  The  distinction  just  made  is  mainly  one  of  matter  or 
content,  seeing  that  the  method  of  interaction  is  substan- 
tially the  same  in  the  two  types  of  organization,  i.e.,  imita- 
tion.2 

Our  first  problem,  therefore,  is  the  determination  of  the 
facts  regarding  the  '  what '  of  social  life.  What  is  it  that 
is  common  to  all  societies,  and  is  also  capable  of  progres- 
sive organization  in  each  society  ? 

§  3.    The  Matter  of  Social  Organization 

321.  Coming,  therefore,  to  the  question  of  the  matter, 
the  'what,'  of  social  organization,  I  shall  state  a  general 
result,  and  then  indicate  certain  lines  of  evidence  for  it. 

This  result  may  be  put  in  the  form  of  a  thesis  as  follows : 
the  matter  of  social  organization  consists  of  thoughts  ;  by 
which  is  meant  all  sorts  of  intellectual  states,  such  as  im- 
aginations, knowledges,  and  informations.  These  thoughts 
or  knowledges  or  informations  originate  in  the  mind  of 
the  individuals  of  the  group,  as  inventions,  more  or  less 
novel  conceptions;  what  we  have  called  'particularizations.' 
At  their  origin  there  is  no  reason  for  calling  them  social 
matter,  since  they  are  particular  to  the  individual.  They 
become  social  only  when  society  —  that  is,  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  social  group,  or  some  of  them  —  also  thinks 

1  Durkheim   goes   further  in  requiring  what  he  calls  '  individualizing,'  in 
addition  to  '  thinking '  in  true  '  societies.'     Cf.  §  2  of  Chap.  XI.  on  '  Social 
Progress.' 

2  That  is  '  conscious  imitation '  in  its  ordinary  sense.     It  works  in  animal 
companies,  so  far  as  they  have  co-operations  which  are  not  purely  instinctive. 


488  Social  Matter  and  Process 

them,  knows  them,  is  informed  of  them.  This  reduces 
them,  from  the  individual  and  particular  form  to  a  general 
or  social  form,  and  it  is  only  in  this  form  that  they  furnish 
social  material,  through  what  has  been  called,  again,  the 
'  generalizations '  effected  by  society.  It  is  evident  that 
these  positions  are  not  at  all  new  after  our  earlier  discus- 
sions ;  our  main  interest  in  presenting  them,  as  well  as  the 
points  of  evidence  which  follow,  lies  in  the  advantage  of 
having  them  definitely  formulated  about  the  present  topic, 
and  also  as  bringing  us  to  a  characterization  of  the  sort 
of  thought  which  is  socially  available. 

The  general  considerations  upon  which  this  opinion  is 
based  may  be  given  in  contradistinction  from  special  lines 
of  evidence.  These  general  considerations  will  be  seen  to 
arise  in  connection  with  the  general  requirements  of  social 
theory  as  stated  in  the  foregoing  pages. 

(i)  It  is  only  thoughts  or  knowledges  which  are  imitable 
in  the  fruitful  way  required  by  a  theory  of  progressive 
social  organization.  It  has  been  said  by  some  that  beliefs 
and  desires  are  thus  imitable.  It  is  clear,  however,  to  the 
psychologist  that  beliefs  and  desires  are  functions  of  the 
knowledge-contents  about  which  they  arise.  No  belief 
can  be  induced  in  one  individual  by  another  except  as  the 
fact,  truth,  information,  believed  is  first  induced.  The 
imitator  must  first  get  the  thought  before  he  can  imitate 
belief  in  the  thought.  So  of  a  desire.  I  cannot  desire 
what  you  do  except  as  I  think  the  desirable  object  some- 
what as  you  do.  Both  belief  and  desire  are,  as  has  been 
argued  above,  functions  of  thought-content. 

If  it  be  a  question  of  imitative  propagation  or  reproduc- 
tion from  one  member  of  a  social  group  to  another,  the 
vehicle  of  such  a  system  of  reproductions  must  be  thought 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        489 

or  knowledge.  The  only  other  psychological  alternative 
is  to  say  that  the  imitative  propagation  takes  place  by  the 
simple  contagion  of  feeling  and  impulse.1  This,  however, 
takes  us  back  to  the  question  already  raised  above,  i.e.,  the 
question  of  possible  progress  by  society.  We  found  that 
the  reign  of  imitative  feeling  and  impulse,  whether  it  be  by 
instinct  or  by  suggestion,  would  make  possible  only  the 
form  of  organization  in  which  fixed  habit  is  all,  and  in  which 
no  accommodation,  movement,  progress,  would  take  place. 
This  we  found  to  characterize  certain  animal  companies, 
and  mobs  of  persons,  in  distinction  from  true  societies.2 

(2)  It  is  only  in  the  form  of  thoughts,  conceptions,  or 
inventions  that  new  material,  new  'copies  for  imitation,' 
new  schemes  of  modified  organization,  can  come  into  a 
society  at  any  stage  of  its  development.  This  seems  evi- 
dent from  the  mere  statement  of  it.  If  we  ask  how  a  new 
measure  of  legislation,  a  new  scheme  of  reform,  a  new 
opinion  about  style,  art,  literature,  even  a  new  cut  to  our 
coats  or  a  changed  height  of  hat  —  how  any  one  of  these 
originates,  we  are  obliged  to  say  that  some  one  first 

1  Great  variety  of  view  obtains  as  to  the  fundamental  psychologico-social 
fact;    Le    Bon    says   'Sentiments,'    Novikow    'Desires,'    Lacombe   'Needs.' 
M.  Lapie  gives  an  interesting  critique  of  these  positions  in  the  article  cited. 

2  See   above,  Chap.  VI.,  §  5.     The    biological  view  which  considers   the 
unit- person  as  such  the  material  of  social  organization  may  be  refuted  in  a 
word.     It  is  as  persons  that  persons  come  into  social  relationships,  and  the 
differences  of  persons  are  just  in  the  psychological  part.     One  physical  body 
is  as  good  as  another  before  social  law,  unless  indeed  by  reason  of  its  colour, 
etc.,  it  becomes  a  matter  to  arouse  psychological  attitudes:  a  point  suggested 
above  apropos  of  'social  forces'  (Sect.  297,  note).     The  distinction  between 
things  in  groups  and  persons  in  society  is  that  there  is  a  '  give-and-take  '  in 
the  latter  case.     The  object  of  social  study  is  thus  the  '  giving  and  taking,' 
and  the  material  is  that  which  is  '  given  and  taken.'    For  a  fine  examination  of 
the  'unit-person'   theory  see  Lacombe,  rHistoire  consider  e  comme  science, 
Introduction. 


490  Social  Matter  and  Process 

thought  of  it.  Thought  of  it,  that  is  the  important  thing. 
Feeling  and  desire  might  have  impelled  to  thought; 
urgent  need  may  have  prompted  the  invention ;  decaying 
modes  may  have  made  reform  a  matter  of  necessity ;  but 
with  all  the  urgency  that  we  may  conceive,  the  measure, 
the  reform,  the  new  style,  has  to  originate  somewhere  in 
the  form  of  a  concrete  device,  which  society  may  take  up 
and  spread  abroad.  This  particular  form  is  then  —  apart 
from  happy  accidents  of  discovery1 — the  thought  of  some 
one  ;  and  society  afterwards  '  generalizes '  the  thought. 

Of  all  the  individual's  doings,  therefore,  it  is  his  thoughts 
which  are  the  socially  available  factors  of  his  life.  Of 
course  there  is  a  form  of  social  propagation  which  takes 
its  origin  in  the  actions  alone  of  this  man  or  that,  whether 
any  thought  be  discoverable  in  the  actions  or  not.  But 
apart  from  the  fact  that  such  actions  have  to  be  thought 
by  the  imitators,  however  spontaneous  or  accidental  they 
may  have  been  on  the  part  of  the  original  actor,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  this  form  of  social  origination  is  on  the  side  of 
mere  accident,  and  reduces  itself  to  repetition,  social  con- 
vention, or  mob-action,  and  is  lacking  in  itself  of  any 
fruitfulness  in  the  production  of  new  phases  of  social 
progress.  It  is  thus  even  with  the  cases  of  contagion  of 
crime  already  spoken  of.  However  much  we  deplore 
them  and  lament  the  victims,  we  do  not  fear  that  the 
crimes  may  become  recognized  social  modes  of  conduct. 
That  would  mean  disintegration. 

With  these  general  considerations  in  mind,  —  which  are 
enough  in  themselves  to  justify  a  close  examination  of  the 
position  that  thought  or  knowledge  is  the  matter  of  social 
organization,  —  we  may  proceed  to  cite  two  lines  of  evi- 

1  And,  of  course,  the  happy  accidents  have  to  be  re-thought. 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        491 

dence  which  support  this  view.  One  of  them  is  drawn 
from  the  facts  of  the  child's  social  development,  as  already 
depicted,  and  the  other  from  the  corresponding  facts  of 
the  social  and  ethical  man's  relations  to  the  historical 
institutions  of  society.  These  are  the  two  spheres  in 
which  the  consideration  of  the  psychological  factors  in- 
volved in  social  organization  leads  us  to  reliable  results. 

322.  I.  A  further  development  of  the  line  of  thought 
suggested  in  our  consideration  of  social  interests1  leads 
us  to  the  view  that  the  so-called  'dialectic,'  whereby  the 
child  comes  to  a  knowledge  of  himself  by  building  up  a 
sense  of  his  social  environment,  may  also  be  looked  at 
from  the  side  of  social  organization.  If  we  grant  that 
the  thought  of  self  takes  its  rise  as  a  gradual  achievement 
on  the  part  of  the  child  by  means  of  his  constant  experi- 
ence of  the  personalities  about  him,  and  that  he  has  not 
two  different  thoughts  for  himself  and  the  other,  —  the 
ego  and  the  alter,  —  but  one  thought  common  in  the  main 
for  both;2  then  it  becomes  just  as  impossible  to  construe 
the  social  factor,  the  organized  relationships  between 
him  and  others,  without  taking  account  of  his  and  their 
thoughts  of  self,  as  it  is  to  construe  the  thoughts  of  self 
without  taking  account  of  the  social  relationships.  The 
thought  of  self  arises  directly  out  of  certain  given  social 
relationships ;  indeed,  it  is  the  form  which  these  actual 
relationships  take  on  in  the  organization  of  a  new  personal 
experience.  The  ego  of  which  he  thinks  at  any  time  is 
not  the  isolated-and-in-his-body-alone-situated  abstraction 
which  our  theories  of  personality  usually  lead  us  to  think. 

»Chap.  I.,§i. 

'2  This  common  or  general  part  consists  mainly,  as  has  been  said,  in  motor 
attitudes.  Cf.  Mental  Development,  p.  330. 


492  Social  Matter  and  Process 

It  is  rather  a  sense  of  a  network  of  relationships  among 
you,  me,  and  the  others,  in  which  certain  necessities  of 
pungent  feeling,  active  life,  and  concrete  thought  require 
that  I  throw  the  emphasis  on  one  pole  sometimes,  calling 
it  me ;  and  on  the  other  pole  sometimes,  calling  it  you  or 
him.  The  social  meaning  of  this  state  of  things  comes 
out  when  we  look  into  its  psychological  presuppositions 
in  the  whole  group.  Let  us  then  call  the  child's  sense 
of  the  entire  personal  situation  in  which  he  finds  himself 
at  any  time  in  his  thought,  his  self-thought-sitnation.  This 
phrase,  which  I  use  simply  for  shorthand,  may  be  ex- 
panded always  into :  '  the  social  situation  implicated  in 
the  thought  of  self. ' 

323.  Now,  whatever  is  true  of  one  individual's  growth 
by  imitative  appropriation  of  personal  material,  is  true  of 
all ;  and  we  have  the  giver  turned  into  the  taker  and  the 
taker  into  the  giver  everywhere.  The  growing  sense  of 
a  'self-thought-situation'  in  each  is,  just  to  the  extent  that 
the  social  bonds  are  intimate  and  intrinsic,  the  same  for 
all.  The  possibility  of  co-operation  —  as,  for  example, 
the  co-operations  of  children's  games  —  depends  upon 
this  essential  sameness  of  the  personal  thoughts  of  the 
whole  circle  in  each  situation.  My  action  depends  upon 
my  understanding  of  your  thought  and  his,  and  your 
action  depends  upon  your  understanding  of  my  thought 
and  his,  and  so  on.1  Looked  at  objectively,  we  say  that 
the  children  are  in  social  relationship ;  looked  at  subjec- 
tively, the  truth  is  that  they  are  thinking  the  same 
thoughts  of  the  personal-social  situation,  and  this  thought 

1  The  case  will  be  remembered  (Sect.  183)  in  which  H.,  by  putting  an  arti- 
ficial verbal  value  on  an  article,  thus  counted  on  the  sameness  of  E.'s  socially 
induced  desire  and  discounted  it  to  her  own  private  advantage. 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        493 

is  just  the  '  self-thought '  in  the  stage  of  development 
which  it  has  reached  in  this  little  mind  or  that,  to  be 
brought  out  on  this  or  that  occasion.  H.  understands 
E.  in  terms  of  her  own  motives,  desires,  tendencies,  likes 
and  dislikes,  and,  acting  on  this  understanding,  finds  that 
it  works ;  so  E.  treats  her  self-thought  as  true  to  H.'s 
thought,  and  it  works ;  to  find  that  either  of  these  expec- 
tations did  not  work  in  the  great  run  of  cases  of  action 
would  be  to  say,  from  the  objective  point  of  view,  that  the 
social  relationship  was  dissolved.  But  this  could  not  be 
without  at  the  same  time  disintegrating,  so  far  as  the 
factors  are  intrinsic,  the  sense  of  personal  self  in  each 
of  the  children,  or  taking  it  back  toward  the  beginning 
of  its  development. 

324.  The  question  of  the  material  of  social  organiza- 
tion comes  up  here  as  soon  as  we  ask  what  it  is  that  the 
children  pass  about,  give  and  take,  in  this  interplay  with 
one  another.  And  we  find  here  just  the  distinction  which 
occurred  from  the  consideration  of  the  difference  between 
human  and  animal  co-operations.  We  find  the  child  at 
first  largely  organic,  instinctive,  directly  emotional,  under 
the  influence  of  pleasures  and  pains.  His  sympathy  is 
at  first  organic,  and  his  antipathies  likewise.  But  close 
observation  shows  that  it  is  largely  by  the  growing  realiza- 
tion of  personal  distinctions,  on  the  basis  of  which  his 
thought  of  self  develops,  that  he  comes  to  have  conscious 
imitations,  original  interpretations,  hesitations,  inhibitions, 
volitions.  At  first  the  relation  is  one  of  direct  stimulation 
and  direct  response.  If  this  state  of  things  continued, 
men  would  form  'companies,'  not  'societies.'  Direct 
suggestion,  emotional  reaction,  as  much  co-operation  as 
heredity  might  give  consistently  with  the  other  features 


494  Social  Matter  and  Process 

—  that  would  be  the  state  of  things.  But  now  let  the 
child  begin  to  think,  and  we  find  certain  great  features 
of  social  import  springing  up  in  his  life.  First,  a  distinc- 
tion in  the  elements  of  his  environment  according  as  they 
are  personal  or  not ;  second,  a  difference  of  attitude  toward 
persons,  and  toward  different  persons,  according  as  the 
elements  of  personal  suggestion  become  assimilated  to 
this  group  of  experiences  or  to  that ;  third,  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  other  persons  in  the  same  terms  as 
himself,  i.e.,  as  having  attitudes  like  his  in  similar  cir- 
cumstances, and  as  thinking  of  him  as  he  thinks  of  them. 
But  all  this  is  due  to  thought,  involves  knowledges,  and 
the  sorting  of  them  out.  The  emotions  now  spring  from 
thought-experiences,  and  the  attitudes,  actions,  responses 
now  take  on  the  character  of  means  to  a  personal  end, 
the  end  being  the  thought  which  issues  in  this  or  that 
attitude  or  action.  This  development  has  been  all  along 
the  burden  of  our  song. 

We  may  say  then,  as  a  first  gain,  from  the  considera- 
tion of  the  children,  that  what  we  call  objective  social 
relationships  are  the  objective  manifestations  to  the  on-looker 
of  a  common  self-thought-situation  in  the  different  indi- 
viduals, together  with  the  movements  of  its  growth  in 
each  as  the  immediate  situation  calls  it  out. 

325.  II.  We  have  now  found  so  much  justification  for 
two  positions :  first,  that  the  material  of  social  organization 
must  be  considered  as  thoughts ;  thoughts  which  arise  in 
individual  minds  and  are  then  re-thought  imitatively  by 
others,  and  so  carried  on  through  a  social  career;  and 
second,  that  the  child's  social  sense,  that  is,  his  sense  of 
social  situations,  however  meagre  and  contracted  or  how- 
ever full  and  rich,  arises  and  grows  as  a  function  of  his 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        495 

thought  of  himself.  In  other  words,  society  to  the  child 
—  society  from  the  private  subjective  point  of  view  —  is  a 
concrete  situation  involving  related  changes  among  the 
elements  and  attitudes  which  constitute  his  self-thought. 
The  further  question  remains :  given  this  objective  social 
material  —  thought  —  and  given  also  this  subjective  sense 
of  society  in  the  individual,  ivliat  then  is  the  objective  char- 
acter of  social  organization  ?  For,  of  course,  the  question 
of  science  is  just  this  objective  question  ;  not  only  what 
does  each  individual  think  of  the  social  situation  when  he 
thinks  of  it  at  all,  but  what  must  the  observer  think  of  it 
after  he  finds  out  scientifically  all  about  it  ?  His  question, 
then,  in  view  of  the  two  earlier  determinations,  is  this :  is 
the  thought  which  constitutes  the  material  of  social  organ- 
ization any  thought  at  random,  thought  X,  thought  Y, 
thought  Z,  these  and  others  ?  Or  must  it  be  some  par- 
ticular sort  of  thought?  And  again,  if  the  latter,  must 
it  be  the  sort  of  thought  which  the  individual  thinks  when 
he  reaches  his  sense  of  social  situations  as  functions  of  his 
thought  of  himself  ?  To  come  right  to  the  conclusion,  I 
think  the  last  is  true ;  and  its  truth  appears,  again,  in 
what  was  called  above  J  the  Publicity  of  all  social  truth. 
What,  then,  is  this  publicity  when  considered  from  the 
objective  point  of  view  of  social  science  ?  It  may  be 
stated  in  a  sentence  (which  we  go  on  to  illustrate  and  ex- 
plain): every  socially  available  thought  implies  a  public 
'  self-thought-situation '  which  is  strictly  analogous  in  its 
rise  and  progress  to  the  self -thought-situation  of  the  indi- 
vidual member  of  society. 

326.    We  may  take  an   illustration   from   the   ordinary 
attitude  which  society  takes  toward    human    life,  in  con- 
1  Chap.  VIII.,  §  3. 


496  Social  Matter  and  Process 

trast  with  the  attitude  which  the  individual  might  some- 
times think  himself  justified  in  taking  toward  his  own  life,  in 
case  he  succeeded  in  stripping  from  his  thought  its  '  pub- 
licity,' and  acted  on  the  lower  unethical  sanctions  alone. 

Let  us  say  that  there  is  a  question  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  A 
as  to  whether  he  shall  put  a  barrier  across  his  hay-field  to 
protect  himself  from  injury  at  the  point  at  which  a  rail- 
road crosses  the  field.  He  says  to  himself:  "I  have  crossed 
that  field  many  times  ;  I  have  never  been  struck  by  a 
train ;  the  chances  are  that  I  never  shall  be ;  it  would  be 
useless  trouble  and  expense."  So  he  takes  the  risk  of  his 
life,  and  is  probably  justified  by  the  event  in  doing  so.  So 
the  sanctions  of  a  private  kind,  mainly  that  of  his  intelli- 
gence, seem  to  sustain  him  in  this  decision. 

But  now  let  us  suppose  that  Mr.  A  is  also  a  public  offi- 
cial and  has  to  consider  the  question  of  putting  up  barriers 
at  railway  crossings  generally.  He  is  then  told  that  at 
each  place  at  which  a  railway  crosses  a  road,  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  pedestrians  who  go  that  way  are  killed 
each  year.  He  might  say  of  each  of  these  what  he  had 
before  said  of  himself,  that  the  chances  were  in  favour  of 
safety.  But  now  that  he  takes  a  public  point  of  view,  this 
is  no  longer  sanctioned  in  his  thought.  It  is  no  longer  the 
question  of  the  continuance  of  the  life  of  this  one  man  or 
that.  It  is  now  the  question  of  the  greatest  possible  safety 
to  the  collective  or  entire  life  of  the  community.  To  put  up 
barriers  at  all  the  crossings  would  undoubtedly  prevent  the 
loss  of  many  citizens  a  year.  The  social  or  public  sanc- 
tion, then,  impels  him  in  just  the  opposite  direction ;  and 
he  not  only  votes  for  the  measure,  but  bears  a  share  of  the 
taxation  and  allows  the  barrier  to  be  put  up  in  his  own  hay- 
field. 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        497 

327.  If  now  we  take  this  situation  at  its  lowest  terms 
and  attempt  to  analyze  it  we  find  that  it  implies  certain 
things : 

.  (i)  A  shifting  of  the  individual's  point  of  view,  in  such  a 
way  that  the  earlier  private  thought  of  self  is  held  in  check 
before  a  higher  or  ideal  thought  of  self ;  the  self  of  the 
man  acting  in  public  is  different;  if  he  be  true  to  it,  he 
can  no  longer  act  out  his  private  thought.  (2)  There  is  in 
his  mind  a  sense  of  the  reciprocity  of  action  of  all  the  indi- 
viduals with  reference  to  one  another  under  this  larger 
self-thought ;  and  the  actual  social  situation,  involving  all 
the  individuals,  is  possible  because  this  reciprocity  and 
sameness  of  attitude  are  actually  real.  This,  then,  consti- 
tutes the  public  self-tJiought-situation  or  the  social  situation 
implicated  in  the  public  thought  of  self. 

328.  It  is  only  through  the  reality  of  the  first  of  these 
movements  in   Mr.   A's  mind   that   the   second   becomes 
possible,    and   has   its  value  for  objective  science.     The 
public  or  reciprocal  reference  of  the  judgment  in  each 
case   arises   only   through   the    assimilation    of    the    pri- 
vate and  ejective  self-thoughts  in  a  larger  whole  of  the 
same  kind.     The  constituting  of  the  larger  self   is  just 
the  evidence  of  the  integrating  of  the  more  partial  selves; 
and  if  the  public  reference  is  due  to  the  common  element 
in  the  different  individuals'  self-thoughts,   then  each  in- 
dividual must  get  the  growth  which  the  assimilation  repre- 
sents, and  all  the  individuals  must  construct  somewhat  the 
same  ideal.     The  former  is  secured  in  the  normal  growth 
of    the    '  self-thought-situation '    in    each,    and   the    latter 
through  their  actual  life  in  a  common  social  tradition  and 
heritage. 

Taking  the  point  of  view  of  society,  therefore,  in  con- 


498  Social  Matter  and  Process 

trast  with  that  of  the  individual,  we  find  the  state  of  things 
which  social  science  is  led  to  recognize,  i.e.,  an  actual 
integration  of  individuals  just  through  the  identical  higher 
self  which  their  life  together  makes  it  possible  for  them  to 
set  up.  From  this  point  of  view,  therefore,  we  may  call 
this  a  public  '  self-thought-situation,'  —  a  social  situation 
which  is  implicated  in  a  public  thought  of  self — and  go  on 
to  inquire  into  the  laws  of  progress  and  development  which 
it  shows,  always  with  reference  to  the  individuals  of  whose 
growth  it  is  a  function.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in 
this  public  self  thus  understood,  we  have  reached  a 
measure  of  genetic  justification  for  a  position  taken  up  by 
Aristotle  and  so  often  reasserted  in  the  history  of  ethical 
discussion:  the  position  which  finds  itself  obliged  to  fall 
back  upon  a  hypothetical  '  best  man'  or  oracle,  whose  judg- 
ment would  be  correct  if  it  could  be  had.  In  our  develop- 
ment, however,  this  public  self  is  the  objective  form  of 
organization  into  which  growing  personalities  normally  fall, 
and  its  meaning  will  grow  clearer,  I  trust,  as  we  proceed. 

329.  But  it  may  be  said,  surely  it  is  not  necessary 
that  all  thoughts,  inventions,  schemes,  ideas,  reforms,  etc., 
should  have  this  quality  which  we  have  called  '  publicity ' 
to  be  available  for  the  instruction  or  reforming  of  society. 
Yes,  they  must  have  it;  that  is  just  the  point  which  I  wish 
to  urge.  No  knowledge,  simply  as  knowledge,  can  be  social 
knowledge  or  become  the  instrument  of  social  advance  until 
it  be  made  over  to  the  public  self,  by  becoming  in  the  minds 
of  the  individuals  who  think  it  a  public  tiling,  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  private  thoughts  which  they  entertain 
simply  as  individuals.  Whatever  the  thought  is,  however 
great  the  invention,  however  pregnant  the  suggestion  of 
reform,  it  is  not  of  social  value  until  I  am  justified  in 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        499 

thinking  it  as  also  thought  by  the  ideal  self  whose  enter- 
tainment of  it  gives  it  validity  and  general  authority  to 
all  the  other  individuals  of  the  group.  I  may,  from  my 
private  judgment,  discount  this  further  development  of  my 
thought  beforehand ;  that  is,  I  may  confidently  expect  that 
my  invention  will  be  ratified  by  society,  and  so  come  to 
have  the  requisite  publicity;  but  I  then  only  do  so  as  I  ap- 
peal just  to  that  higher  self  already  formed  in  my  breast 
through  social  experience,  and  through  it  anticipate  the 
fate  of  the  thought  which  I  thus  value.  This  is  when  the 
invention  is  looked  at  subjectively.  As  soon  as  we  look 
at  it  objectively,  —  that  is,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
science  of  social  organization,  —  we  have  to  say  that  no 
thought  is  social  or  socially  available  which  is  still  in  the 
mind  of  an  individual  awaiting  that  generalization  by  the 
public  which  will  give  it  the  character  of  publicity  by 
reason  of  the  essential  attribution  to  it  of  a  public  and 
general  self. 

In  other  words,  my  private  thought,  in  order  to  be 
social  matter,  must  enter  into  that  organization  or  integra- 
tion of  the  public  '  self-thought-situation '  which  is  reflected 
more  or  less  adequately  in  every  adult ;  it  is  thus  thought 
by  that  higher  self  which  imposes  law  upon  all ;  with  this 
goes  the  thought  by  me  that  all  men  agree  with  me  in 
thinking  it,  and  that  they  will  give  the  enforcement  of 
it  the  same  recognition  (including  its  enforcement  upon 
me)  that  I  give  it  (including  its  enforcement  upon  them). 
The  thought  thus  becomes  involved  in  the  growth  of  the 
personal  self,  and  just  by  this  becomes  public  also.  With- 
out this  connection  it  cannot  be  social.  The  ultimate 
subjective  criterion  of  social  thought  is  the  self-thought, 
with  all  its  wealth  of  implication  as  to  the  social  situation. 


500  Social  Matter  and  Process 

And  the  ultimate  objective  criterion  is  the  actual  ratifi- 
cation of  the  thought  by  the  individuals  through  common 
action  upon  the  situation  which  their  self -thoughts  mutually 
implicate.  By  this  they  show  their  common  integration  in 
a  public  '  self-thought-situation.' 

We  come,  therefore,  in  closing  in  upon  our  question  as 
last  stated  to  see  that  the  growing  '  self-thought-situation ' 
in  the  mind  of  the  individual  is,  when  viewed  in  its  mutual 
interactions  and  correlations  in  the  group,  just  the  material 
of  social  organization  itself.  For  nowhere  else  can  we 
find  the  requisites  for  public  availability  fulfilled.  Thus 
arises  ipso  facto  a  public  '  self-thought-situation '  ;  on  no 
other  view  can  we  account  for  the  response  of  individuals 
to  the  organization  which  society  shows.  So  both  from 
the  side  of  the  child's  and  man's  growth,  and  from  the 
side  of  society  considered  objectively,  we  are  led  to 
identify  the  organization  of  the  individual's  personality 
directly  with  that  of  society,  in  respect  both  to  its  material 
and  to  its  method  of  acting.  This  may  be  made  a  little 
clearer  by  a  short  criticism  of  two  views  which  reach  a 
conclusion  on  the  surface  similar  to  this ;  I  refer  to  that  of 
Adam  Smith  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  Hegel  on  the 
other  hand. 

330.  Adam  Smith's  wonderful  treatment  of  the  social 
bond  under  the  term  '  sympathy  '  is  familiar  to  all  students 
of  English  ethics.  The  criticism  which  I  wish  to  make 
upon  it  is  that  he  assumes  the  'publicity'  requisite  to 
social  organization,  and  rests  satisfied  with  that  assumption. 

According  to  Adam  Smith,  I  sympathize  with  what  I 
find  '  suitable  '  in  the  affections  of  others,  since  it  would 
be  what  I  myself  should  experience ;  and  the  sense  of  this 
agreement  is  moral  approbation.  Then  transferred  to 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        501 

myself,  my  judgment  of  myself  is  a  reflex  of  my  sense  of 
your  corresponding  sympathy  with  me. 

But,  by  way  of  criticism,  we  may  say  that  as  soon  as  we 
come  to  a  social  situation  as  such,  that  is,  to  a  situation 
involving  two  persons,  an  aggressor  and  an  aggressee, 
the  question  arises,  with  which  shall  I  sympathize  ?  And 
the  same  question  arises  as  soon  as  I  come  to  ask 
about  my  own  self-approbation  or  disapprobation,  con- 
sidered as  a  reflex  of  the  sympathy  of  others  with 
me.  For  I  do  not  know  whether  the  other  will  sym- 
pathize with,  i.e.,  approve  of,  me  or  the  other  whom 
my  action  affects.  What,  then,  is  the  general  element 
which  will  give  publicity  and  constancy  of  value  to  a 
social  action  as  such  ?  This  Adam  Smith  answers  in  a 
general  way  by  saying  that  that  action  is  approved  which 
is  most  sympathized  with,  say  as  between  the  aggressor 
and  the  aggressee.1  But  this  of  course  does  not  help 
matters ;  for  how  am  I  to  know  which  of  the  two  you  sym- 
pathize with  the  more,  except  as  I  again  ask  myself  which 
would  call  out  the  more  sympathy  in  my  own  case.  That 
is,  the  measure  —  strictly  construing  the  doctrine  —  would 
be  after  all  just  what  we  started  with,  the  individual's 
private  sympathy.  Adam  Smith  later  on  calls  in  the 
recognition  of  the  judgment  of  a  hypothetical  best  man, 
to  whom  tacit  appeal  is  made.  But  this  seems  to  me  to 
be  simply  an  assumption  to  which  he  had  no  right ;  it 
certainly  does  not  follow  from  the  play  of  sympathies  as 
he  has  depicted  it. 

331.    In    stating   and    criticising   various   theories    just 

1  This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  outcome  of  Adam  Smith's  discussions  of 
utility,  as  attaching  to  "  behaviour  which  tends  to  promote  the  happiness  either 
of  the  individual  or  of  society."  Theory  of  the  Mor.  Sent.,  Stewart's  ed.  p.  xxx. 


502  Social  Matter  and  Process 

above,  there  was  intentionally  omitted  a  class  of  thinkers 
whose  doctrine,  disregarding  differences  of  detail,  may 
be  described  as  the  '  ideal '  theory  of  social  life.  This 
theory  generally  proceeds  by  deduction  and  reaches  a 
view  of  society  from  the  presuppositions  of  idealistic 
philosophy.  For  this  reason,  i.e.,  that  the  doctrine  is  so 
purely  deductive,  it  has  little  consideration  from  the  more 
scientifically  disposed  thinkers  in  this  field ;  and  this  the 
more  since  it  is  with  the  name  of  Hegel,  and  with  the 
Neo-Hegelians,  that  this  type  of  social  theory  is  asso- 
ciated. 

In  its  broadest  outlines,  this  philosophy  makes  reality  iden- 
tical with  thought,  finds  consciousness,  and  especially  self- 
consciousness,  the  'coming-to-itself '  of  reality,  and  sees  in 
social  organization  the  objectivation  or  universalizing  of  the 
self-consciousness  which  first  '  comes-to-itself '  in  the  indi- 
vidual. The  social  doctrines  of  this  school  seem  to  be 
these :  first,  the  essential  character  of  reality,  as  thought, 
is  not  lost  in  the  objectifying  whereby  the  individual  be- 
comes universalized  in  society ;  and  second,  the  complete 
'  coming-to-itself '  of  reality,  in  society  as  in  the  individual, 
is  in  the  form  of  a  self.  When  we  put  these  two  positions 
together,  we  have  the  doctrine  that  it  is  in  the  individual's 
formal  thought  of  self  that  there  is  realized  both  the  sub- 
j  vtive  form  of  reality  and  its  objective  form  as  existing  in 
:  iciety.1 

It  is  in  this  conclusion  rather  than  in  the  metaphysics 
which  lies  back  of  it  —  and  I  wish  to  draw  a  sharp  line 
between  them  —  that  our  present  interest  lies.  The  state- 
ment regarding  the  tJiought  of  self  it  is  which  our  detailed 

1  Hegel's  distinction  between  '  subjective  mind '  and  '  objective  spirit.' 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        503 

inductive  investigation  both  of  the  child's  development  and 
of  the  movements  of  society  goes  far  to  confirm. 

Yet,  from  the  empirical  point  of  view,  this  doctrine  of 
Hegel's  also  makes  the  assumption  of  publicity.  Meta- 
physically it  contains  this  assumption  from  the  start ; 
finding  just  the  coming  of  the  individual  to  personal  self- 
consciousness  a  manifestation  of  the  universal  self  all  the 
while  implicit  in  nature.  But  in  taking  on  individual  form 
in  the  first  stages  of  the  realization  of  a  self  —  geneti- 
cally considered  —  it  has  temporarily  lost  this  attribute; 
that  it  should  get  it  again  is  to  be  expected ;  and  that 
social  life  is  the  essential  stimulus  to  its  getting  it  again, 
is  a  priori  probable.  Hegel  says  that  social  life  shows 
indeed  the  realization  of  this  expectation.  Yet  how  ? 
That  is  a  question  of  fact. 

Hegel's  answer  is,  in  respect  to  the  social  material, 
similar  to  the  view  which  we  have  developed.  He  shows 
the  dependence  of  personal  development  upon  progressive 
social  conditions,  seen  earliest  in  the  fact  of  subjection,  as 
of  slave  to  master.  Later,  through  the  influences  of  family 
and  state,  certain  regular  self-limitations,  mutual  relation- 
ships, necessities  of  life  and  intercourse,  grow  up  which 
have  the  quality  of  general  or  public  value  when  recog- 
nized by  all. 

This,  I  am  aware,  is  a  meagre  enough  statement  of 
Hegel's  view,  but  it  may  serve  to  indicate  what  is  its 
lack.  What  is  wanting  is  just  the  bridge  from  the  private 
thought  to  the  public  thought.  This,  in  my  view,  the  imi- 
tative process  supplies. 

Given  complex  social  situations,  whence  their  validity 
for  all  the  members  of  society  equally,  and  whence  the 
intrinsic  element  of  public  reference  which  is  a  necessity 


504  Social  Matter  and  Process 

of  social  nature  to  us  all  ?  Hegel's  metaphysics,  of  course, 
supplies  this  element ;  it  is  the  nature  of  thought  to  re- 
cover or  recognize  itself  as  universal  (Anerkennung)  on 
this  higher  plane  of  social  self-consciousness.  But  this, 
when  scanned  from  the  point  of  view  of  actual  genetic 
growth,  requires  an  empirical  process  or  method  of  de- 
velopment both  in  the  individual  and  in  society.  This 
empirical  '  factor '  to  Hegel,  described  as  '  necessary  and 
legitimate,'  '  the  basis  of  the  phenomenon '  of  social  life, 
and  its  '  external  or  phenomenal  commencement,'  but  '  not 
its  underlying  and  essential ]  principle,'  is  'force'  But, 
if  our  earlier  positions  be  at  all  true,  '  force,'  '  constraint,' 
is  not  the  social  process. 

In  short,  it  is  the  great  merit  of  the  idealistic  writers 
that  they  give  a  relatively  full  and  accurate  answer  to  the 
question  of  the  matter  of  social  organization ;  but  with  the 
exception  of  one  author,2  whose  views  are  not  yet  published 
in  detail,  they  fail  to  describe  the  imitative  process  or  type 

1  That  is,  metaphysical.     The  process  of  '  self-recognition '  (das  anerken- 
nende  Selfrstbcwusstseiti)  is  described  by  Hegel  as  a 'battle.'     "I  cannot  be 
aware  of  me  as  myself  in  another  individual,  so  long  as  I  see  in  that  other 
another  and  an  immediate  existence :  and  I  am   consequently  bent  on  the 
suppression  of  this  immediacy  of  his.  .  .  .     The  fight  of  recognition  is  a  life 
and  death  struggle.  .  .  .    The  fight  ends  in  the  first  instance  as  a  one-sided 
negation  with  inequality.  .  .  .    Thus  arises  the  status  of  master  and  slave.  .  .  . 
In  the  battle  for  recognition  and  the  subjugation  under  a  master,  we  see,  on 
their  phenomenal  side,  the  emergence  of  man's  social  life  and  the  commence- 
ment of  political  union."  —  Encyclo/>aJii,  Part  III.,  Sects.  431-3  (Wallace's 
translation,  ffegefs  rhilosopky  of  Mind,  p.  55  f.)     This  allies  Hegel  to  the 
'constraint'  theorists  already  criticised  (Sect.  317). 

2  Professor  Royce,  who  agrees  with  this  main  point  of  criticism,  saying 
in    a  private    communication :    "  An    express    recognition    of   the    imitative 
factor  as  such  is  what  I  miss  in  him"  (Hegel).     I  take  pleasure  in  print- 
ing, in    Appendix   H,  a   passage    from  Professor  Royce's  letter  which  indi- 
cates a  difference  of  emphasis  in  the  interpretation  of  Hegel's   '  master  and 
slave '  teaching. 


The  Matter  of  Social  Organization        505 

of  function  by  which  the  social  matter  —  the  '  self-thought- 
situation '-—becomes  public,  and  is  so  made  available  for 
society  and  for  the  individual  both  at  once?- 

332.  In  the  way  of  more  positive  evidence  that  social 
material  always  implicates  the  '  self-thought-situation,'  we 
may  note  that  much  of  the  matter  accumulated  by  the  great 
succession  of  English  moralists  to  prove  that  sympathy  in 
all  its  manifestations  is  a  '  putting  of  oneself  in  another's 
shoes '  is  directly  available.  For  we  have  only  to  substi- 
tute imitative  identity  of  the  ego  and  the  alter  for  the 
artificial  '  putting  of  one  into  the  shoes  of  the  other ' ; 
and  the  results  follow.  This  is  to  say  that  the  old  doc- 
trine of  sympathy  is  essentially  correct  as  far  as  it  goes 
in  the  recognition  of  the  implication  of  the  self ;  it  only 
needs  supplementing  from  investigations  into  the  genesis 
and  nature  of  the  class  of  phenomena  covered  by  the 
term  '  sympathy.'  This  the  view  does  which  makes  the 
self-thought  a  progressive  imitative  outcome;  with  that 
active  play  between  the  poles  of  its  realization  which 
is  just  the  method  of  its  growth.  Thus  a  certain  unity 
and  lack  of  assumption  is  secured  to  the  whole  scheme. 
For  example,  one  might  take  the  fine  catalogue  of  argu- 
ments given  by  Adam  Smith  at  the  beginning  of  his 
Moral  Sentiments  and  review  them2  one  by  one,  finding 
that  on  this  view  they  all  fall  together  and  support  a 
derivation  of  publicity,  where  he  could  only  assume  it. 
For  he  assumes,  first,  that  we  sympathize  with  each  other; 
this  he  makes  his  platform.  Then  he  assumes  that  it 
is  pleasant  to  both  the  parties  when  they  are  in  a  state  of 

1  Cf.,  for  example,  Mackensie,  Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy,  2d  ed., 
pp.  199  ff.  and  258  f. 

2  I  omjt  this  review  of  Adam  Smith's  arguments  for  lack  of  space. 


506  Social  Matter  and  Process 

sympathy.  Both  positions  are  true  as  facts,  and  equally 
true  of  animals.  But  the  reason  of  the  facts,  lying 
(i)  in  the  identity  of  a  progressive  thought,  which  (2)  just 
by  its  growth  in  each,  integrates  all  in  social  relation- 
s/tips, —  this  is  wanting.  Both  of  these  facts  are  ac- 
counted for,  in  man,  by  the  view  that  from  the  first  the 
gathering  self-thought  grows  up  by  imitative  suggestion. 
For  on  this  view  sympathy  is  a  necessary  emotional 
attitude  flowing  from  the  identical  thought  of  self ;  and 
the  pleasure  of  mutual  sympathy  and  co-operation  is 
the  pleasure  of  personal  activity  which  is  normally  inter- 
woven in  a  situation  understood  and  appealed  to  by  all 
the  individuals. 

333.  Further  evidence  comes  from  some  of  the  posi- 
tions already  taken  in  earlier  pages,  to  which  we  may 
simply  refer  for  the  sake  of  completeness. 

(1)  We  may  cite  the  evidence  which  goes  to  show  that 
each  person  does  depend  upon  social  stimulation  in  his 
personal  growth,  and   does  arrive  at  standards  of  social 
judgment  and  feeling  which  reflect  in  the  main  the  stand- 
ards current  in  his  environment  (Parts  I.-II.  especially). 
Here  the  writings  of  Leslie  Stephen,  Hoffding,  S.  Alexan- 
der, Josiah  Royce,  etc.,  may  be  utilized. 

(2)  A  further  argument  may  be  drawn  from  the  state- 
ment of   the  same  question  in  reference  to  ethical  pub- 
licity, i.e.,  the  evidence  which  goes  to  show  that  genetically 
social  suggestion  and  social  beliefs  are  intrinsic  to  moral- 
ity (Chap.  I.,  §  3,  and  Chap.  VIII.,  §§  2-4).     This  point 
is  mentioned  again  below,  where  the  connection  between 
ethical  and  social  progress  is  indicated. 

(3)  Finally,  there  is  the  evidence  from  the  history  of  the 
social  life  of  man,  which  shows  the  constant  'give-and- 


The  Process  of  Social  Organization       507 

take  '  between  the  individual  and  society  which  the  position 
now  taken  would  require  (Parts  III.-IV.).1 

§  4.    The  Process  of  Social  Organization 

334.  Upon  the  question  of  the  process  or  method  of 
social  organization,  with  the  type  of  function  which  it  re- 
quires in  the  individuals,  we  need  not  stop  long,  seeing 
that  all  our  developments  have  proceeded  upon  a  cer- 
tain construction  of  this  method  and  function,  and  have  in 
turn  also  confirmed  that  construction. 

(i)  We  have  pointed  out  that  the  growth  of  the  indi- 
vidual's self-thought,  upon  which  his  social  development 
depends,  is  secured  '  all  the  way  through '  by  a  twofold 
exercise  of  the  imitative  function.  He  reaches  his  sub- 
jective understanding  of  the  social  copy  by  imitation,  and 
then  he  confirms  his  interpretations  by  another  imita- 
tive act  by  which  he  ejectively  reads  his  self-thought  into 
the  persons  of  others.  Each  of  these  stages  is  essential  to 
his  growth  as  a  person,  and  so  also  is  it  essential  to  the 
growth  of  society.  For  society  grows  by  imitative  gen- 
eralization of  the  thoughts  of  individuals.  So  we  may 
give  this  as  the  main  point  of  proof  that  imitation  is  the 
method  of  social  organization.  And  in  this  statement  again 
two  positions  are  involved :  first,  that  it  is  through  imita- 
tion that  the  self-thought-situation  in  all  its  stages  of 
growth  and  in  all  the  individuals  actually  has  its  rise ;  and 
second,  that  it  is  by  imitative  selection  and  generalization 
that  the  individuals  are  integrated  in  the  public  self- 
thought-situation. 

1  These  discussions  deal  only  with  what  might  be  called  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  the  course  of  man's  social  history.  The  external  or  anthropological 
evidence  would  still  remain  to  be  cited. 


508  Social  Matter  and  Process 

(2)  Again,  we    have   seen  that  it  is  just  this  point  of 
view  which  is  lacking  in  so  many  theories  of  social  organ- 
ization.    We  have  criticised  both  the  '  sympathy '  and  the 
'  ideal '  theories  on  this  score.     Only  when  identity  of  self- 
thought  is  secured  all  through  personal  growth,  can  unity 
of  trend  of  the  social  forces  be  secured ;  and  this  comes 
only  through  the  imitative  function. 

(3)  The  works  of  recent  writers  have  shown  imitation 
actually  operative  in  society,  and  have  conclusively  estab- 
lished its  universality  from  an  objective  point  of  view : 
notably  Tarde,  Sighele,  Le  Bon. 

(4)  In  a  recent  volume J  the  present  writer  has  been  led 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  reaction  of  the  imitative  type  is 
the  original  form  of  organic  and  mental  accommodation  to 
environment.     However  that  may  be  in  cases  not  now  in 
discussion,  the  evidence  given  in  our  earlier  chapters  to 
show  that  the  child  actually  comes  into  his  social  inheri- 
tance by  imitative  appropriation  of  the  lessons  of  the  social 
environment,  makes  it  evident  that  here  is  an  unmistaka- 
ble example  of  the  '  circular  '  process  which  is  explained  in 
that  work.     The  child  imitates  another,  and  so  learns  what 
is  later  to  be  a  habit  of  action  to  himself.     This  is  a  step 
in  each  case  toward  his  more  complete  accommodation  to 
the  social   world.     And  his  later  actions,  confirming,  ex- 
tending, and  modifying  these  acquired  habits,  only  further 
illustrate  the  same  process  in  the  higher  reaches  of  de- 
liberation, desire,  volition,  etc. 

(5)  The  assumption  that  imitation  is  the  method  of  so- 
cial organization  may,  however,  be  brought  to  a  further  test 
in  connection  with  the  problem  of  social  matter,  since,  after 
having  determined  the  sort  of  matter  with  which  we  have 

1  Mental  Development. 


The  Process  of  Social  Organization        509 

to  deal,  we  must  then  ask  whether  the  imitative  method  of 
organization  adequately  explains  the  actual  forms  which 
this  material  takes  on.  To  my  mind  a  strong  proof  of  the 
claim  for  imitation  as  type  of  social  function  is  derived  from 
the  effective  application  of  which  we  have  seen  it  to  be 
capable  after  the  nature  of  the  material  is  determined,  as 
earlier  in  this  chapter  (§  3).  It  thus  loses  the  casual  em- 
pirical character  which  social  observation  so  often  shows, 
and  becomes  wrought  into  what  may  then  be  called,  in  a 
figure,  social  morphology. 

The  last  two  considerations  suggested  lead  us,  however, 
to  our  next  topic,  i.e.,  the  consideration  of  the  sort  of  view 
of  Social  Progress  we  should  have  to  hold  if  the  two  main 
results  of  our  discussions  proved  to  be  true:  (i)  that  the 
matter  of  social  organization  is  thought,  which  has  the  at- 
tribute of  publicity  springing  from  its  attribution  in  the 
mind  of  the  social  thinker  to  a  public  self,  and  (2)  that 
the  method  or  type  of  function  in  social  organization  is 
imitation. 


CHAPTER   XIII 
SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

335.  IT  has  been   shown  already  that   there  are  two 
contrasted    functions    involved    in    the    progress    of    the 
thoughts  which  are  socially  available,   seen   respectively 
in  the  '  particularizing '  done  by  the  individual,  and  the 
'  generalizing '  done   by   society.      Both    of   these   go   on 
together,   and   give   rise   to   the   conditions   which    social 
life  in  all  its  complexity  presents.     We   have  called  the 
individual  the  particularizing  social  force  ;  he  invents,  con- 
structs,   interprets,    on   the   basis   of  the   matter  already 
current  in  society  -and  administered  to  him  through  '  social 
heredity.'     And  society,  as  already  organized,  has  been 
called   the  generalizing  social  force ;    it   reduces   or   gen- 
eralizes the  inventions  of   the  individual   by  integrating 
them  in  the  public  '  self-thought-situation '  now  described. 
The  further  question  then  arises :  how  and  in  what  direc- 
tion is  social  progress  determined  under  the  interplay  of 
these  two  types  of  social  force  ? 

§  i.    The  Determination  of  Social  Progress 

336.  The  word  'determination'  is  used  here  after  anal- 
ogy with  the  use  of  the  same  word  in  recent  biological  dis- 
cussions, in  which   the  phrases  '  determinate  variations,' 
'  determinate  evolution,"  etc.,  are  of  frequent  occurrence. 
The   analogy   with    the   biological   conception  of   'deter- 

510 


The  Determination  of  Social  Progress      5 1 1 

initiation,'  in  respect  to  the  movement  of  development, 
is  very  close ;  indeed,  when  due  regard  is  had  to  the  dif- 
ference of  province  in  which  the  development  occurs,  we 
may  say  that  the  question  set  under  this  head  in  the  two 
departments  is  the  same.  It  is  briefly  this  :  do  certain  lines 
of  growth,  remaining  consistently  the  same  as  respects 
characters,  functions,  or  attributes,  appear  in  the  develop- 
ing content  ?  Is  there  consistency  of  direction  from  stage 
to  stage  in  the  whole  movement  ?  And  then,  after  such 
determinateness  is  once  discovered,  the  further  question 
at  once  arises :  what  determines  the  movement  in  this 
direction  or  that  ? 

337.  As  soon  as  we  look  into  the  implications  of  the 
positions  already  taken,  we  find  ourselves  shut  up,  I  think, 
to  a  very  definite  view  of  the  determination  of  social  prog- 
ress. The  positions  which  immediately  concern  us  now 
are  three:  (i)  Individuals  can  particularize  only  on  the 
basis  of  earlier  generalizations  of  society.  This  gives  an 
initial  trend  to  the  thought-variations  which  are  available 
for  social  use.1  (2)  Society  is  absolutely  dependent,  as  to 
its  new  acquisitions,  upon  the  new  thoughts,  particulari- 
zations,  of  individuals ;  and  it  again  generalizes  them.  It 
can  get  material  from  no  other  source.  (3)  Only  when  both 
these  conditions  are  fulfilled  —  when  old  social  matter  is 
particularized  by  an  individual  and  then  again  generalized 
by  society  —  can  new  accretions  be  normally  made  to  the 
social  content  and  progress  be  secured  to  the  organization 
as  a  whole.  Looking  at  these  requirements  together,  and 
attempting  to  discover  what  sort  of  a  general  movement 
will  result,  we  find  what  may  be  called  the  '  Dialectic  of 

1  Cf.  the  section  on  '  Selective  Thinking,'  Chap.  III.,  Sect.  3,  for  the  justifi- 
cation of  this. 


512  Social  Progress 

Social  Growth,'  an  expression  which  is  intended  to  sug- 
gest an  analogy  with  the  '  Dialectic  of  Personal  Growth,' 
already  described. 

§  2.    Dialectic  of  Social  Growth 

338.  In  the  '  dialectic  of  personal  growth '  we  saw  the 
development  of  self-consciousness  proceeding  by  a  two- 
fold relation  of  '  give-and-take  '  between  the  individual  and 
his  social  fellows.  Personal  material,  coming  in  the  shape 
of  suggestions  from  the  environment,  is  first  '  projective,' 
as  we  called  it ;  then  it  is  taken  over  into  the  private  circle 
of  the  inner  life  by  imitation,  and  so  becomes  personal  or 
1  subjective,'  as  belonging  to  the  ego ;  and  then  again  by 
a  return  movement  between  the  same  two  poles,  also 
imitative  in  its  nature,  the  characters  of  the  subject  are 
read  into  the  alter  personalities,  so  becoming  'ejective.' 

The  various  stages  into  which  consciousness  grows  — 
becoming  social,  ethical,  etc.,  by  this  one  method  of  social 
give-and-take  —  have  already  been  treated  in  detail ;  but  it 
is  interesting  to  see  that  this  way  of  growing  on  the  part 
of  the  individual  consciousness  may  be  stated  in  terms 
which  reproduce  in  a  very  precise  analogy  the  three  re- 
quirements which  we  just  found  it  necessary  to  lay  down1 
as  characteristic  of  the  growth  of  society.  We  may  say  (i) 
that  the  individual  reaches  new  inventions,  interpretations, 
.  particularizations,  in  his  own  personal  growth,  only  on  the 
basis  of  what  he  already  understands  of  personality ;  that 
is,  of  what  he  has  learned.  Each  step  of  his  progress  in 
understanding  personality  is  a  particularization  in  his  own 
thought  of  old  material,  a  personal  interpretation,  subjec- 
tive in  its  character.  And  (2)  only  those  particularizations, 
1  Sect.  337. 


Dialectic  of  Social  Growth  513 

interpretations,  inventions,  thoughts  of  personality,  are 
permanently  available  for  his  growth  which  he  again 
ejects  outward  and  finds  to  hold  generally  of  others  also ; 
these  are  generalized  as  habits  and  stand  as  accretions  to 
his  growth.  This  last  is  also  imitative,  since  only  the 
imitable  elements  of  his  subjective  thought  are  thus  true 
and  available  in  his  treatment  of  others.  (3)  His  'self- 
thought-situation  '  grows  only  when  both  these  phases  are 
accomplished  together.  Here,  then,  is  personal  growth 
quite  accurately  stated  in  the  same  terms  as  those  which 
give  the  outcome  of  our  detailed  examination  of  social 
organisation. 

I  am  not  willing  to  leap  to  metaphysical  or  even  logical 
conclusions  on  the  basis  of  this  analogy,  striking  as  it 
seems  to  be,  especially  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
requirements  of  idealistic  philosophy.  But  we  may  at  least 
use  it  as  an  analogy,  and  see  its  further  bearings  in  the 
matter  of  the  determination  of  social  progress. 

339.  Coming  to  make  out  the  analogy  in  more  detail, 
we  see  that  society  stands  as  a  quasi-personality  under 
a  twofold  relation  of  give-and-take  to  the  individuals  who 
make  up  the  social  group.  It  is  related  to  these  individ- 
uals in  two  ways :  first,  as  having  itself  become  what  it  is 
by  the  absorption  of  the  thoughts,  struggles,  sentiments, 
co-operations,  etc.,  of  individuals ;  and  second,  as  itself 
finding  its  new  lessons  in  personal  {now  social)  growth  in 
the  new  achievements  of  individuals.  If  we  take  any  lesson 
which  society  learns,  —  any  one  thought  which  it  adopts 
and  makes  a  part  of  its  organized  content,  —  we  can  trace 
the  passage  of  this  thought  or  element  through  the  two 
poles  of  the  '  dialectic  of  social  growth,'  just  as  we  can 
also  trace  the  elements  of  personal  suggestion,  in  the  case 


514  Social  Progress 

of  the  analogous  dialectic  of  the  individual's  growth.  The 
new  thought  is  '  projective '  to  society  as  long  as  it  exists 
in  the  individual's  mind  only ;  it  becomes  '  subjective '  to 
society  when  society  has  generalized  it  and  embodied  it  in 
some  one  of  the  institutions  which  are  a  part  of  her  inti- 
mate organization;  and  then  finally  society  makes  it  'ejec- 
tive'  by  requiring,  by  all  her  pedagogical,  civil,  and  other 
sanctions,  that  each  individual,  class,  or  subordinate  group 
which  claims  a  share  in  her  corporate  life,  shall  recognize 
it  and  live  up  to  it. 

Society,  in  other  words,  makes  her  particularizations,  in- 
ventions, interpretations,  through  the  individual  man,  just 
as  the  individual  makes  his  through  the  alter  individual 
who  gives  him  his  suggestions ;  and  then  society  makes 
her  generalizations  by  setting  the  results  thus  reached 
to  work  again  for  herself  in  the  form  of  institutions,  etc., 
just  as  the  individual  sets  out  for  social  confirmation 
and  for  conduct  the  interpretations  which  he  has  reached. 
The  growth  of  society  is  therefore  a  growth  in  a  sort  of 
self -consciousness J  —  an  awareness  of  itself —  expressed  in 

1  Whether  we  hold  that  there  is  a  '  real '  general  or  social  self  seems  to 
me  to  depend  very  much  upon  our  metaphysical  presuppositions.  If  we  mean 
by  a  '  real '  self  a  something  back  of  the  processes  of  growth  and  not  expressed 
in  the  content  of  thought,  then  there  is  no  reason  for  saying  that  there  is  a 
'  real '  social  self.  If,  however,  our  meaning  in  speaking  of  a  self  he  exhausted 
by  just  the  thought-content  with  its  organization  and  growth,  then  society  may 
have  a  '  real'  self  just  as  the  individual  has.  Indeed,  if  a  metaphysician  should 
find  it  well  to  say  on  the  strength  of  the  analogous  '  dialectic '  that  there  must 
be  hovering  over  society  an  '  I '  consciousness  which  integrates  all  the  'me' 
consciousnesses  of  the  individuals,  I  think  the  contrast  between  the  ideal  '  I ' 
and  the  habitual  '  me,'  in  the  individual,  would  be  in  so  far  an  available  anal- 
ogy. M.  Novikow  {Conscience  et  Volonte  sociales)  thinks  collective  conscious- 
ness and  will  are  realized  in  the  socially  elite,  who  are  the  learned  and  (as  a 
class)  wealthy  individuals;  in  them  social  experience  is  organized,  just  as 
physiological  processes  have  their  organic  centre  in  the  brain. 


The  Direction  of  Social  Progress         515 

the  general  ways  of  thought,  action,  etc.,  embodied  in  its 
institutions ;  and  the  individual  gets  his  growth  in  self- 
consciousness  in  a  way  which  shows  by  a  sort  of  re- 
capitulation this  twofold  movement  of  society.  So  the 
method  of  growth  in  the  two  cases  —  what  has  been 
called  the  '  dialectic '  —  is  the  same. 


§  3.    The  Direction  of  Social  Progress 

340.  From  these  indications  —  which  must  in  all  cases 
be  controlled  by  an  appeal  to  fact  —  we  see  the  direction 
in  which  social  progress  must  move.  The  individual 
moves  directly  toward  an  ethical  goal.  His  intellectual 
sanctions,  it  is  true,  tend  toward  a  personal  and  egoistic 
use  of  his  own  forces  and  those  of  society ;  but  that 
cannot  go  far,  since,  in  its  extreme,  it  runs  counter  to 
the  co-operations  on  the  basis  of  which  the  dialectic  of 
his  personal  growth  as  such  must  proceed.  The  very 
growth  of  intelligence  in  the  individual  is  itself  a  gen- 
eralizing process,  and  by  this  generalization,  a  measure 
of  higher  restraint  is  set  on  the  elements  which  enter 
into  the  generalization.  The  growth  of  intelligence  must 
itself  issue  in  those  ideal  states  of  mind  which  are  called 
social  and  ethical  and  which  -set  the  direction  of  growth 
as  a  whole.  The  ethical  sanction  comes  to  replace  and 
limit  the  sphere  of  application  of  the  sanctions  of  desire 
and  impulse ;  and  so  the  individual  gets,  in  his  private 
life,  a  bent  toward  social  co-operation  and  ethical  conduct. 

So  with  social  progress.  The  use  of  intelligence  for 
the  private  manipulation  of  social  agencies  does  actually 
represent  a  level  of  social  institutional  life,  and  in  certain 
great  departments  of  human  intercourse  —  as  especially 


516  Social  Progress 

the  commercial  —  relatively  selfish  ends,  as  seen  in  per- 
sonal competition  of  wits,  seems  to  be  as  high  as  society 
has  yet  gone.  But  as  with  individual  growth  so  here. 
As  soon  as  the  personal  use  of  the  individual's  wit  brings 
him  into  conflict  with  either  of  the  two  necessary  move- 
ments by  which  society  gradually  grows,  —  or  with  the 
institutions  which  represent  them, — so  soon  must  the  in- 
dividual be  restrained.  And,  further,  the  restraint  is  no 
more  an  artificial  thing,  an  external  thing,  in  society  than 
it  is  in  the  individual. 

The  social  or  communal  growth  shows  the  same  ethical 
tendency  for  the  reason,  altogether  apart  from  analogy, 
that  the  actual  conditions  in  society  are  the  same  as  in 
the  individual.  Society  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  generaliz- 
ing force.  It  reduces  the  thoughts  which  rise  and  claim 
recognition  in  its  midst  to  forms  of  general  acceptance 
and  to  working  shape.  The  very  institution  therefore, 
which  embodies  the  new  idea  and  enforces  it  upon  the 
individuals,  is  itself  the  work  of  the  best  individuals,  and 
represents  the  restraint  of  the  egoistic  and  personal  sanc- 
tions in  favour  of  social  and  ethical  co-operation. 

Further,  all  the  pedagogical  sanctions  of  society,  in  the 
family,  the  school,  etc.,  are  brought  directly  and  positively 
to  bear  for  the  production  of  those  social  forms  of  habit 
which  confirm  and  encourage  the  development  of  tolera- 
tion, forbearance,  and  all  the  virtues  which  are  of  social 
value. 

341.  There  is,  however,  another  and  more  profound 
reason  that  the  direction  of  social  progress  must  be 
determined  by  ethical  and  religious  sanctions,  and  toward 
the  goal  represented  by  a  state  of  ethical  co-operation. 
It  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  of  what  was  called  above  the 


The  Direction  of  Social  Progress          517 

'  publicity '  of  all  ideal  thought  of  personality.  We  saw 
that  the  individual  cannot  be  a  wicked  or  a  good  individ- 
ual in  his  own  opinion  —  that  is,  cannot  get  a  full  ethical 
judgment  on  his  own  acts  —  without,  at  the  same  time, 
making  his  thought  include  the  similar  judgment  passed 
by  his  fellow-men.  His  private  self-judgment  is  a  judg- 
ment based  on  the  sense  of  a  prevalent  public  judgment. 
The  sense  of  the  opinion  of  the  public  is  an  ingredient  or 
element  in  the  very  synthesis  by  which  the  ethical  judg- 
ment is  constituted.  Therefore,  so  far  as  the  growth  of 
his  personality  involves  a  general  or  ideal  thought  of  self, 
so  far  is  this  self  a  public  self  whose  thought  is  ipso  facto 
the  birth  of  a  sanction  of  a  public  kind.  The  man  says  to 
himself :  "  I  think  thus  of  myself ;  other  men  think  thus 
of  me ;  I  think  thus  of  them  when  they  are  in  my  place ; 
and  all  for  the  reason  that  what  we  each  and  all  judge 
with  reference  to,  is  that  ideal  self  which  each  of  us  only 
partially  realizes.  I  partially  realize  it  in  my  own  way,  and 
each  of  the  others  does  in  his  own  way ;  and  it  is  by  these 
partial  realizations  in  concrete  instances  alone  that  this 
ideal  gets  its  reality." 

Now,  we  have  seen  that  social  growth  proceeds  by 
just  this  same  development.  Objectively,  and  in  fact,  it  is 
seen  in  the  actual  publicity  of  social  institutions  and  inter- 
ests. But  the  same  result  comes  out  if  we  take  the  point 
of  view  which  we  may  call  subjective  to  society  itself.  If 
we  went  so  far  with  the  analogy  from  the  individual's 
growth  as  to  speak  of  society  as  a  quasi-personality,  and 
asked  what  thought  such  a  quasi-personality  would  have 
to  think  in  order  to  grow  and  to  go  on  developing  by  the 
method  of  personal  dialectic  seen  in  the  individual,  we 
should  say  that  society  should  have  to  think  in  a  manner 


518  Social  Progress 

which  involves  the  publicity  attaching  to  ideal  and  ethical 
personality.  It  would  have  to  ask  what  institutions  were 
good  for  its  citizens  as  such,  not  what  was  good  for  this 
particular  individual  or  that.  Its  thought  of  personality, 
all  the  way  through,  would  be  the  form  of  general  person- 
ality which  is  realized  in  the  individuals  at  that  stage ; 
but  which  is  not  identical  with  any  one  of  them.  With 
this  thought  of  general  personality,  there  would  go  the 
thought,  also,  that  the  thought  that  it  did  thus  think  was 
the  outcome  of  all  the  partial  personality  thoughts  which 
the  individuals  thought,  of  all  the  judgments  which  they 
passed  on  one  another  ;  otherwise  the  social  quasi-person- 
ality  would  have  no  content  out  of  which  to  constitute  its 
general  thought  of  self. 

All  this  is  simply  a  realization  in  the  community,  in 
public  opinion,  of  the  ethical  standards  of  judgment  which 
the  individual  must  have  if  he  is  to  develop  beyond  the 
stage  of  concrete  egoistic  or  altruistic  intelligence  or  of 
impulsive  action.  That  the  individual  does  go  further  is  a 
fact;  and  it  is  just  the  fact  which  we  call  ethical  develop- 
ment. He  has  attained  the  form  of  general  thinking 
about  himself  and  others  which  carries  with  it  sentiments 
of  a  social  and  ethical  kind.  This  enables  him  to  consti- 
tute society  in  a  way  which  would  be  impossible  if  he  had 
only  reached  the  lower  development  of  the  animals,  say, 
with  the  sanctions  for  action  which  go  with  this  lower 
development. 

342.  So  when  we  come  to  ask  what  the  direction  of 
social  progress  may  be,  we  find  that  it  cannot  be  a  direc- 
tion which  violates  the  method  and  denies  the  meaning  of 
those  very  states  of  mind  —  the  ideal,  social,  and  ethical 
states — which  have  enabled  the  individual  to  come  into 


The  Direction  of  Social  Progress          5 1 9 

his  social  relationships.  The  ethical  sanction  in  the  indi- 
vidual comes  to  control  the  other  sanctions,  since  it  gener- 
alizes and  so  transcends  them.  Society  represents  the 
embodiment  of  these  generalizations.  Its  institutions  both 
represent  and  further  the  individual's  growth.  Its  trend 
forward,  then,  must  be  in  the  line  in  which  the  individual's 
higher  growth  also  proceeds.  This  is  the  trend  toward  the 
complete  regulation  and  use  of  the  forces  of  the  individual 
in  the  interests  of  social  and  ethical  unity  and  co-operation.1 

Two  things  are  accordingly  true  of  the  determination  of 
social  progress.  These  two  things  are  these :  first,  social 
progress  is  determined  by  the  social  generalization  already 
remarked  upon  working  upon  the  thoughts  of  individuals ; 
and  second,  this  form  of  determination  is  necessarily  in  the 
direction  of  the  realization  of  ethical  standards  and  rules  of 
conduct. 

343.  The  example  given  above,2  of  Mr.  A,  who  allowed 
barriers  to  be  put  up  in  his  hay-field,  also  illustrates,  when 
we  come  to  consider  Mr.  A's  psychological  movements, 
the  fact  that  social  progress  is  essentially  an  ethical  move- 
ment. The  taking  of  the  general  point  of  view  involved 
the  direct  suppression  of  Mr.  A's  personal  sanctions,  the 
securing  of  publicity  of  judgment,  and  the  establishing  of 
reciprocity  of  duties  and  rights  between  him  and  others,  with 
respect  to  an  ideal  thought  of  personality  —  all  of  which 
characterizes  the  ethical  sentiment.  To  take  away  his  re- 
sponsiveness to  ethical  considerations  is  just  to  remove  a 
man's  ability  to  act  the  good  citizen  in  the  responsible 
matter  which  the  illustration  supposes. 

1  This  is  the  socialistic  ideal;  but  it  can  be  attained  only  by  the  actual 
rise  of  individuals  who  erect  such  an  ideal  first  in  its  personal  form. 

2  Chap.  XII.,  §  3  (Sect.  326). 


520  Social  Progress 

It  may  be  said  that  the  insurance  companies  take  the 
same  point  of  view  for  the  purpose  of  making  money. 
And  so  they  do.  But  that  is  only  to  say  that  social  forces 
and  situations  may  be  used  intelligently  for  other  than 
directly  ethical  purposes,  —  a  proposition  fully  maintained 
in  the  foregoing  pages.  The  question  as  between  the  ethi- 
cal value  of  a  proceeding  and  its  intellectual  value  arises 
only  when  there  is  a  conflict  between  the  sanctions  on 
which  they  respectively  proceed.  For  example,  if  it  could 
be  shown  that  the  insurance  companies  were  impair- 
ing the  ethical  or  even  the  financial  interests  of  the  com- 
munity or  of  its  citizens,  by  making  money  in  this  way, 
then  the  question  of  the  social  suppression  of  the  com- 
panies would  at  once  arise  naturally  among  us.  Or  if  the 
man  A  put  up  barriers  in  the  United  States,  where  the 
duty  of  doing  so  has  not  yet  been  enforced  upon  the  re- 
sponsible parties,  and  exacted,  let  us  say,  such  a  toll  from 
pedestrians  as  to  yield  him  an  income,  then  Mr.  A's  action 
would  have  the  intellectual  sanction  of  being  a  money- 
making  scheme,  and  possibly  also  —  in  case  he  really  took 
the  social  point  of  view,  and  did  it  primarily  to  save  human 
life  —  the  ethical  and  social  sanction  as  well. 

In  short,  society 's  sanction  is  always  ethical  to  the  indi- 
vidual, while  it  remains  social ;  but  individuals  may  take 
society's  point  of  view  from  private  and  personal  motives. 

§  4.    Conclusion  on  the  Biological  Analogy 

344.  On  the  whole,  then,  we  reach  a  theory  of  social 
determination  which  makes  it  only  to  a  slight  degree 
analogous  to  the  determination  reached  in  biology.  Bio- 
logical variations  are  determinate  in  the  sense  that  their 


Conclusion  on  the  Biological  Analogy      521 

mean  is  shifted  in  this  direction  or  that  in  each  gener- 
ation from  the  fact  that  certain  types  of  individuals  are 
kept  alive  in  the  earlier  generation,  i.e.,  those  which 
could  adjust  themselves  to  the  requirements  of  the  envi- 
ronment in  useful  ways.1  This  gives  determination  to  bio- 
logical evolution.  In  the  social  life  we  find  practically  no 
determination  in  the  social  direction  extending  to  the  indi- 
viduals considered  as  variations ;  and  only  the  '  suppression 
of  the  unfit '  after  they  are  born.  Yet  in  the  primitive 
social  conditions  there  mus,t  have  been  a  positive  progress 
of  the  mean  in  social  variation  analogous  to  that  just  de- 
scribed as  operative  in  biology. 

But  though  there  is  this  degree  of  analogy  between  the 
two  determinations,  there  is  the  difference  arising  from 
the  different  sorts  of  heredity  appearing  in  the  two  in- 
stances. In  social  organization  the  fruitful  variation  is  not 
the  individual  as  such,  but  his  thoughts.  This  lifts  the 
problem  into  the  sphere  of  social  heredity.  Physical 
heredity  generalizes  or  regresses  toward  a  mean  of  all  the 
individuals ;  while  in  the  sphere  of  social  heredity,  the 
generalization  made  by  society  is  of  each  new  thought, 
invention,  or  sentiment  considered  for  itself;  and  a  single 
such  social  variation  may  revolutionize  society  and  give  a 
new  bent  to  the  social  movement. 

345.  On  the  whole,  then,  it  follows  from  our  study  that 
the  progress  of  society  is,  in  its  method,  in  its  direction, 
and  in  its  impelling  motives,  analogous  to  the  groivth  of  con- 
sciousness rather  than  to  that  of  the  biological  organism, 
The  current  phrase  '  social  organism '  is  a  defective  one, 

1  Illustrating  '  Organic  Selection ' ;  see  Appendix  A.  Whether  there  be 
actual  determination  of  variations  as  such  in  definite  directions  is  a  disputed 
point;  the  evidence  at  hand  is  against  the  view  that  there  is. 


522  Social  Progress 

If  we  mean  'organization  '  when  we  use  the  term  'organ- 
ism,' —  leaving  to  further  consideration  the  sort  of  organi- 
zation, —  well  and  good.  But  to  speak  of  the  social 
'  organism,'  as  the  biologist  speaks  of  the  organisms  with 
which  he  deals,  is  misleading  in  the  extreme.  The  organi- 
zation which  is  effected  in  social  life  is,  in  all  its  forms, 
a  psycltological  organization.  Its  materials  are  psychologi- 
cal materials :  thoughts,  with  all  their  issue  in  desires,  im- 
pulses, sanctions,  consciences,  sentiments.  These  things 
are  incapable  of  any  organization  but  that  which  finds  its 
analogy  in  the  actual  growth  of  living  minds.  To  speak 
with  Mr.  Spencer  of  social  atoms  and  organs,  of  organic 
processes  and  centres,  of  nerves  of  primary  and  second- 
ary order,  etc.,  after  analogy  with  the  physiological  organ- 
ism, is  nothing  short  of  violence  to  the  nature  of  the 
material  of  social  science.  What  can  be  done  with  such 
critical  phenomena  in  social  theory  as  imitation,  generali- 
zation, invention,  tradition,  social  and  pedagogical  sanc- 
tion, on  such  a  crude  analogy  as  that  ?  To  force  them  into 
biological  moulds  is  simply  to  deform  them.1 

And  where  in  the  analogy  from  an  organism  will  we 
place  the  influence  of  ethical  and  religious  sentiment,  which 
is  really,  in  a  detailed  analysis,  the  determining  factor  in 
social  progress  ? 

There  are,  on  the  contrary,  two  great  compelling  reasons 
for  saying  that  the  sort  of  organization  which  is  effected 
in  social  progress  is  psychological.  First,  all  organization 
is  a  function  of  the  material  organized.  The  biologist 
is  the  first  man  to  admit  this,  now  that  he  has  given 
up  the  forms  of  vitalism  which  saw  in  vitality  a  force  from 

1  Cf.  the  excellent  remarks  in  M.  Simiand's  article,  pp.  497-498. 


•   Conclusion  on  the  Biological  Analogy      523 

outside,  coming  in  to  bend  the  life-processes  this  way  or 
that.  And  a  school  of  psychologists  claim,  as  one  of  their 
greatest  modern  generalizations,  the  idea  that  mental  activ- 
ity is  just  the  movement  of  mental  elements  toward  organi- 
zation ;  not  a  force  from  outside  working  these  elements  up. 
To  treat  social  organization  after  analogy  with  the  growth 
of  the  physical  organism,  is  to  set  to  psychological  materials 
a  certain  force  of  impulsion,  over  and  above  the  movement 
which  they  show  in  their  own  natural  theatre  and  in  their 
own  natural  forms  of  growth. 

Second,  the  actual  growth  of  social  organization  shows 
principles  and  methods  which  have  a  meaning  to  us  only 
because  we  have  minds.  Such  are  those  just  mentioned 
—  suggestion,  imitation,  sentiment,  etc.  We  get  at  the 
meaning  of  these  things  in  our  own  personal  growth.  We 
build  up  our  understanding  of  character,  both  our  own 
and  that  which  we  think  our  neighbour  to  have,  just  by 
these  principles.  So  when  we  see  social  organization 
going  on,  we  say :  "  This  is  a  phenomenon  of  imitation, 
that  of  suggestion,  this  again  of  invention,  and  the  other 
of  sentiment."  Indeed,  the  outcome  of  all  our  study  has 
led  us  to  the  view  that  social  progress  is  essentially,  in  its 
method,  a  reproduction  of  the  growth  of  the  individual ; 
and  the  individual  grows  up  in  the  social  circle  just  be- 
cause it  is  so  akin  to  him  that  he  is  able  to  reproduce 
it  in  himself. 


PART  VII 
PRACTICAL    CONCLUSIONS 

CHAPTER   XIV 
RULES   OF   CONDUCT 

THE  practical  questions  which  come  up  in  connection 
with  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  his  social  environ- 
ment are  of  the  greatest  importance.  We  should  expect 
the  discussions  which  attempt  to  throw  light  on  the  social 
organization,  by  means  of  an  examination  of  the  equip- 
ment and  development  of  the  individual,  to  throw  light 
also  on  these  practical  matters ;  for  all  of  an  individual's 
actions  are  sanctioned  either  by  the  conditions  of  his 
private  growth  and  equipment  or  by  the  regulations  of  a 
social  kind  to  which  he  submits.  So  if  we  use  the  ex- 
pression '  rules  of  conduct '  as  covering  all  practical  for- 
mulations of  whatever  kind,  then  we  may  make  some 
deductions  respecting  them  from  the  principles  already 
set  forth. 

346.  At  the  outset,  a  general  truth  seems  to  be  estab- 
lished by  the  discussions  through  which  we  have  come ; 
the  principle,  namely,  that  all  rules  of  action  for  the  guid- 
ance of  life  must  be  of  possible  social  application,  even  though 
in  their  origin  they  are  announced  and  urged  by  individ- 
uals. This  would  seem  to  follow  from  the  fact  that  society 
is  the  generalizing  agency.  The  rule,  considered  as  a  rule,  is 

524 


Rules  in  the  Sphere  of  Impulse  525 

of  general  application.  Its  generality  may  be  considered 
with  reference  to  the  particular  individual's  own  conduct ; 
that  is,  as  coming  to  him  with  his  personal  sanctions  only. 
Or  it  may  be  considered  as  general  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
enforced  on  all  individuals  alike  ;  that  is,  as  having  social 
sanction.  Or,  finally,  a  rule  of  conduct  may  have  the 
quality  of  publicity  already  discussed,  which  makes  it  at 
once  a  thing  of  universal  sanction,  as  typified  in  the  ideal 
rules  of  ethics  and  religion.  It  may  be  well  to  take  up 
these  three  cases,  and  look  at  each  of  them  with  a  view  to 
seeing  its  relation  to  the  sort  of  generalizing  which  seems 
to  be  the  source  of  all  rules  of  conduct  considered  as  social. 
In  other  words,  we  may  show  in  some  detail  that  the  state- 
ment made  above,  to  the  effect  that  all  rules  as  such  are 
capable  of  becoming  social  in  their  nature,  applies  to  each 
of  these  three  cases. 

§  i.   Rules  in  the  Sphere  of  Impulse 

347.  First,  considering  the  rules  for  action  and  conduct 
which  embody  the  individual's  personal  sanctions,  we  find 
the  sorts  of  action  already  pointed  out  in  detail :  the 
impulsive,  the  intelligent,  and  the  reflective  or  ethical. 
Of  these  the  impulsive  type  of  action  may  be  disposed 
of  without  much  trouble.  Impulsive  action  can  have  no 
self-regulation  simply  because  its  sanction  is  necessity. 
Necessity  knows  no  law,  no  rule,  because  it  is  itself  an- 
other name  for  inviolable  law.  There  can  be,  therefore, 
no  question  of  a  law  of  action  to  the  individual  who  acts 
purely  from  impulse.  Capriciousness  is  his  rule  —  and 
that  is  not  a  rule.  So  the  only  regulative  or  legislative 
restraint  to  which  such  action  may  be  brought  is  that 


526  Rules  of  Conduct 

which  comes  either  from  the  actor's  higher  sanctions, 
those  of  intelligence  or  conscience,  or  from  the  sanctions 
of  a  social  kind  which  are  enforced  upon  the  actor.  This 
takes  us,  therefore,  up  into  the  higher  realms  of  conduct. 

348.  The  same  may  also  be  said  concerning  possible 
rules  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  society  at  the  impulsive  or 
so-called  suggestive  stage.  The  mob  exhibits  social  im- 
pulse, but  it  has  no  rule  of  action  save  that  of  suggestion ; 
and  suggestion  has  no  law.  Its  sanction,  again,  is  not  a 
rule,  but  only  the  necessity  which  hurls  the  mob  over  a 
moral  or  legal  precipice. 

The  only  possible  law  or  sanction  which  can  be  brought 
to  bear  on  the  mob  is  that  qompulsion  which  is  enforced 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  or  the  muzzle  of  the  gun.  So 
we  may  not  stop  further  on  this  sort  of  action  in  our 
search  for  rules. 

So  much,  I  think,  we  may  confidently  say,  despite  the 
attempt  of  certain  recent  writers  to  deduce  from  the  action 
of  crowds  a  '  social  ethic ' ;  a  set  of  formulations  or  rules 
which  shall  express  the  laws  of  collective  human  action. 
We  have  seen  above  that  the  only  principles  involved  in 
mob-action,  and  collective  action  as  such,  are  those  of  the 
lower  impulsive  order,  carried  to  the  extremes  which  throw 
into  temporary  abeyance  the  higher  intelligent  and  ethical 
sanctions  of  the  individuals  involved.  This  reversion  from 
social  continence  to  social  passion  brings  about  so  great  a 
simplicity  in  the  operation  of  suggestion  that  no  further 
'ethic '  of  it  is  possible.  What  these  writers  seem  to  reach 
is  a  statement  of  the  causes  or  favouring  conditions  under 
which  this  sort  of  '  social  hypnotism '  of  the  individual 
comes  about.  So  we  may  not  delay  upon  these  cases ; 
but  pass  on  higher  up  in  the  sphere  of  action  in  order 


Intelligent  Rules  527 

to  ask  there  our  question  as  to  whether  all  rules  of  conduct 
are  of  social  availability. 

§  2.    Intelligent  Rules 

349.  The  sanction  of  intelligent  actions  —  that  is,  of 
those  which  involve  desire  —  we  saw  to  be  mainly  success. 
And  it  would  seem  that  there  might  be  rules  of  action 
addressed  to  this  motive  alone,  embodying  the  highest 
wisdom,  which  would  yet  be  unsocial.  Such  rules  would 
be  those  dictated  and  sanctioned  entirely  by  prudence, 
discretion,  convenience,  expediency,  or  the  attainment  of 
happiness.  Such  actions  do,  as  we  have  seen,  represent  a 
period  in  the  life  of  the  child,  and  also,a  type  of  adult  de- 
velopment as  concerns  individual  actions  and  certain  forms 
of  social  competition.  And  we  may  at  once  say  that  such 
rules  do  exist  in  the  maxims  of  practical  wisdom  current  in 
all  societies  and  embodied  in  the  proverbs  of  all  nations. 
Making  this  admission,  it  still  remains  to  ask,  however,  as 
to  the  possible  social  element  in  such  formulations. 

The  foregoing  discussion  brought  out  the  real  conflict 
which  occurs  between  the  individual  and  society  at  this 
point.  It  is  unnecessary  to  bring  that  up  again.  But  it 
is  a  character  of  the  conflict  that  it  concerns  the  excep- 
tional individuals,  or  the  exceptional  acts  of  normal  indi- 
viduals, as  we  were  led  to  conclude  in  the  earlier  place. 
As  to  the  latter,  the  exceptional  acts  or  judgments  of  the 
man  of  normal  social  training  and  sobriety,  it  is  enough, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  question  of  rules,  just  to  say 
that  they  are  exceptional.  The  individual  himself  con- 
siders his  conformity  to  social  sanctions  the  rule,  and  the 
violation  of  them  the  exceptions. 


528  Rules  of  Conduct 

So  soon  as  he  makes  the  violation  of  the  sanctions  of 
society  the  rule,  —  adopts  rules  of  his  own  which  lead  to 
their  systematic  violation,  —  he  then  falls  in  the  other  class, 
the  exceptional  individuals. 

Now  in  this  class  of  exceptional  individuals  we  may 
make  distinctions.  The  men  who  are  exceptional  from  a 
strictly  social  point  of  view,  illustrated  under  the  head  of 
'  social  variations,'  are  those  who  violate  social  rules  habitu- 
ally and  as  such  ;  these  are  suppressed,  made  away  with, 
out  of  the  consideration  of  society  and  out  of  our  theme. 
Even  the  exceptional  individual  must  be,  in  the  main,  if 
he  will  inherit  a  social  part  and  play  it  as  a  man,  not  excep- 
tional. And  if  we  rule  out  the  people  whom  society  rules 
out,  and  these  only,  we  have  left  the  people  whose  endow- 
ments or  training  make  them,  in  certain  respects,  lawgivers 
to  themselves  and  to  society.  What  shall  we  say  to  these  ? 
Has  their  rule  of  action  any  social  ingredient? 

As  far  as  such  a  man's  actions  —  thus  sanctioned  by  pri- 
vate intelligence  —  do  not  conflict  with  social  institutions, 
requirements,  etc.,  so  far  they  may  be  socially  general- 
ized and  made  socially  available.  In  so  far  the  sanction 
of  intelligence  then  gets  support  from  the  social  sanction 
also.  This  we  saw  in  the  case  of  commercial  competition. 
And  this  must  be  essentially  the  character  of  the  individ- 
ual's intelligent  rules.  For  so  soon  as  he  attempts  to 
make  use  of  his  intelligence  in  a  way  which  is  strictly 
private,  —  aiming  at  an  end  quite  his  own,  and  not  sub- 
serving social  utilities,  —  then  he  inevitably  comes  into 
conflict  with  society  in  the  carrying  out  of  his  rule.  In 
real  life,  a  man's  actual  rules  of  private  intelligent  self- 
interest  are  usually  qualified  by  a  social  clause ;  they  read : 
"  Act  to  your  own  advantage  so  long  as  society  does  not 


Intelligent  Rules  529 

find  you  out,  and  with  as  much  temerity  as  you  have." 
His  rules  have  direct  social  and  ethical  limitations.  So 
for  the  first  sort  of  generality  which  we  supposed  a  man's 
action  possibly  to  have  —  universality  in  his  own  private 
life  —  this  is  largely  fictitious,  even  in  its  stronghold,  the 
sphere  of  the  intelligent  sanction.  He  admits  the  social 
limitations  under  which  he  may  observe  it,  in  case  it  be  a 
socially  damaging  line  of  conduct  which  it  prescribes ;  and 
he  admits  its  liability  to  be  generalized  for  social  utili- 
ties, in  case  it  is  not  a  damaging  line  of  conduct.  In 
this  latter  case,  it  comes  under  our  formulation  as  being 
socially  available ;  and  in  the  former  case  it  is  not  a  rule 
in  any  universal  sense.  The  one  case  is  illustrated  by  the 
maxims  of  social  prudence,  the  '  saws '  of  society,  as  well 
as  by  the  larger  things  of  intelligent  co-operation  and 
utility  which  have  arisen  at  first  in  the  single  inventive 
thought  of  one  man,  and  have  then  been  generalized  by 
the  process  already  described.  The  other  case  is  best 
illustrated  by  the  rule  of  action  of  the  acute  thief  who 
escapes  the  law.  He  acts  with  a  rule  of  intelligent  self- 
interest,  but  under  certain  very  evident  social  restrictions ; 
and  with  those  ethical  limitations,  also,  which  are  indi- 
cated in  the  motto,  'there  is  honour  among  thieves.'  If  he 
observe  both  these  restrictions,  again,  however,  strictly 
from  self-interest,  making  success  in  stealing  his  sole 
reason  both  for  observing  the  law  and  for  honouring  the 
rights  of  his  fellow-thieves,  then  he  is  that  sort  of  a  crimi- 
nal exception  to  social  law  which  society  shuts  up  for  life 
when  he  is  caught ;  and  his  rule  of  action,  though  con- 
fessedly a  rule,  is  as  unavailable  for  general  theory  as  is 
the  impulsive  action  which  has  its  law  in  natural  neces- 
sity. 

2M 


530  Rules  of  Conduct 

350.  As  to  the  social  formulation  of  the  sanction  of 
desire,  little  need  be  said.  From  the  very  fact  that  it  is 
social,  it  comes  under  our  formula.  The  only  cases  which 
might  give  room  for  discussion  would  be  those  in  which 
social  intelligence  makes  devices  for  other  than  social 
utility  and  advantage ;  as,  for  example,  the  life-insurance 
companies,  commercial  trusts,  'combines/  etc.  But  we 
have  already  seen  that  as  soon  as  these  devices  become 
sufficiently  damaging  to  society,  they  are  no  longer  toler- 
ated publicly ;  that  is,  the  social  element  of  sanction  comes 
to  suppress  the  private.  As  to  the  question  of  possible 
rules  of  action,  therefore,  the  only  universal  rule  in  these 
cases  is  the  generalized  rule  which  in  the  earlier  con- 
nection was  shown  to  be  the  point  of  view  of  society. 
The  intelligence  cannot  lay  down  its  rule  of  success  as 
a  general  rule,  since  the  constant  call  to  conformity  to 
social  and  ethical  requirements  it  is  which  gives  to 
such  organizations  their  sole  right  to  the  sort  of  public 
exploitation  on  which  their  patronage  and  success  de- 
pend. 

Any  real  conflict  in  this  realm  between  rival  rules 
would  arise  from  a  conflict  of  two  sanctions  both  equally 
social :  the  one  mainly  intellectual,  and  the  other  mainly 
ethical.  And  there  are  many  interesting  cases  of  such 
conflict.  Indeed,  there  are  writers  on  Political  Economy 
who  claim  that  that  science  is  unethical  in  practice ;  that 
a  state  can  have  no  conscience  nor  obligation  arising  from 
sympathy  or  humanity,  and  that  legislation  properly  takes 
account  of  the  fortunes  of  '  our '  citizens,  no  matter  at  what 
damage  or  cost  to  'yours.'  This  is  a  practical  formulation 
of  the  intellectual  sanction  in  its  social  form ;  and  repre- 
sents that  stage  of  culture  in  national  life  which  the  intel- 


Intelligent  Rules  531 

ligent  highwayman  represents  in  private  life.1  Political 
economy  may  be  developed,  like  private  economy,  on  the 
basis  of  rules  which  are  only  intelligent,  —  success  being 
the  only  sanction  for  conduct,  —  but  for  a  nation  to  apply 
such  a  political  economy  is  simply  to  admit  that  the  in- 
dividual citizens  who  represent  the  moral  sense  of  the 
nation  have  not  yet  reduced  their  choicest  sanction  to 
social  form ;  and  that  in  the  highest  sphere  of  social 
organization,  the  ethical,  their  intuitions  have  not  yet  been 
generalized. 

This  case  deserves  attention,  moreover,  from  the  fact 
that  all  of  the  defensive  and  aggressive,  most  of  the 
productive  and  distributive,  and  much  of  the  directly 
educative  organization2  in  the  world  is  actually  at  this 
stage.  Intelligent  action,  with  its  sanction,  has  been  re- 
markably generalized  in  political  and  industrial  life.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  development  of  our  judicial  systems  is 
in  the  direction  of  the  same  adequate  embodiment  of  the 
ethical  sense  in  national  life.3  Yet  the  absence  of  inter- 
national law  —  while  there  are  yet  the  remarkable  trade 
relations  and  refined  rules  of  diplomacy  which  tax  the 
intelligence  of  the  acutest  minds  on  this  side  and  on  that 
—  shows  the  very  backward  development  of  the  ethical 
sanction  in  institutions. 

1  The  American  tariff  for  protection  and  alien  labour  laws  are  cases  in  point. 

2  My  colleague  and  friend,  Professor  H.  C.  Warren,  held,  in  a  paper  read  in 
the  Psychological  Seminary,  that  the  forms  of  social  organization  were  based  on 
three  ultimate  motives  to  action,  —  defence,  nutrition,  education,  —  and  I  use 
this  division  in  my  text.     I  am  not  prepared,  however,  at  present,  to  accept 
the  classification  as  exhaustive.     Reproduction,  for  example,  might  be  consid- 
ered as  a  candidate  for  a  distinct  place. 

*  Even  the  relapse  into  barbarism  seen  in  lynch  law  in  the  South  has  its 
darker  counterpart  in  indifference  to  crime,  or  in  its  intellectual  justification, 
as  seen  in  the  literary  defences  of  anarchism. 


532  Rules  of  Conduct 

§  3.    Ethical  Rules 

351.  Coming,  then,  to  the  ethical  or,  more  widely,  the 
sentimental  forms  of  conduct,  we  have  a  more  complex 
question  of  rules.  And  looking  at  the  problem  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  three  sorts  of  generality  which  a  rule 
may  have,  we  may  waive  certain  of  them  at  once.  The 
ethical  sense  —  taken  as  typical  and  inclusive  of  the  reli- 
gious, aesthetic,  etc.  —  cannot  sanction  a  rule  of  private 
generality  only ;  since  all  ethical  conduct,  as  such,  has  the 
public  reference.  A  man  cannot  have  a  line  of  conduct 
which  is  right  for  him  alone ;  the  very  bounds  of  the  right 
are  coincident  with  the  bounds  of  the  general  self-relation- 
ships which  include  all  concrete  selves.  All  those  who 
are  excluded  are  exceptions,  no  matter  how  great  their 
number.  When  he  pronounces  judgment  upon  himself, 
he  judges  with  all  men.  This  has  been  dwelt  upon  suffi- 
ciently already. 

As  to  the  second  form  of  universality,  —  giving  a  rule  on 
which  all  may  act,  —  this  also  does  not  alone  exhaust  the 
sort  of  sanction  which  ethical  rules  have.  We  can  imagine 
a  form  of  society  built  on  the  basis  simply  of  a  system  of 
conventional  social  rules  which  each  citizen  is  always  to 
observe.1  This  would  be  strictly  a  social  sanction ;  the 
rules  would  be  civil ;  they  might  be  compulsory,  but  they 
need  not  be  ethical.  Such  a  society  would  lack  just  the 
one  thing  which  we  have  found  essential  to  human  society 
considered  as  a  progressive  organization  ;  the  thing  omitted 
by  the  traditional  theories  of  human  society  which  liken 
law  to  convention,  and  conformity  to  convenience  and 

1  Plato's  conception  may  be  recalled  here  ;  and  the  criticism  of  it  by 
Aristotle  in  the  Politic*. 


Ethical  Rules  533 

utility.  This  lack  is  just  the  principle  of  growth :  the 
give-and-take  of  personal  influence  between  the  man  and 
the  group.  Society  has  grown  by  this  process  of  give-and- 
take.  So  also  has  the  individual  grown  by  it.  But  in  the 
individual  it  is  what  we  mean  by  his  ethical  growth.  The 
give-and-take  is  now  in  the  sphere  of  the  ideal  thought  of 
personality,  and  its  exhibitions  are  motived  by  this  ideal 
thought.  So  the  society  which  results  is  also  an  ethical 
society.  Its  institutions  are  generalizations  of  ethical  rela- 
tionships. And  as  in  the  individual  the  ethical  sanction 
has  come  to  replace  and  control  those  of  intelligence  and 
impulse,  so  in  society  also  ethical  sanctions  supersede 
those  of  intelligence,  convention,  and  mob-suggestion. 

So,  apart  from  its  actual  realization  in  society,  of  which 
more  is  to  be  said  below,  the  ethical  rule  is  not  only  a  rule 
which  all  men  are  to  follow,  being  social  in  so  far ;  it  is 
also  the  rule  which  embodies  the  ethical  sanction  which 
has  been  so  far  developed.  The  individual's  ethical  deliver- 
ances are  from  the  platform  of  social  sentiment.  The 
average  individual's  ethical  judgments  include  the  social 
requirements  of  his  group.  He  says,  '  I  ought,'  meaning, 
also,  not  only  '  he  and  she  ought,'  but '  what  we  ought  is  the 
lawful.'  The  ideal  lawgiver,  the  self  of  general  value,  is 
the  communal  legal  self. 

Such  an  individual,  whose  '  ought '  is  exhausted  by  the 
legal,  is  possibly  below  the  average,  numerically  speaking  ; 
for  the  moral  education1  of  most  men  gives  them  other 
and  higher  embodiments  of  the  '  ought '  of  personal  duty 
than  law  or  public  opinion  represents ;  but  that  does  not 
impair  the  general  truth  that  the  legal,  conventional, 

1  And  in  many  communities  notably  the  religious  education. 


534  Rules  of  Conduct 

standard  seen  in  public  opinion  and  law  is  also  somebody's 
etJiical  ideal,  or  has  been  ;  it  could  never  have  come  to  be 
the  legally  or  conventionally  right,  if  it  had  not  first  been 
somebody's  ethically  right.  The  growth  of  society  is  but 
the  generalization  of  the  individual's  ethical  ought  into 
society's  conventional  ought.  And  then  it  proceeds  by 
generalizing  the  further  acquirements  of  the  ethical  ought 
in  the  individual;  acquirements  made  only  by  conformity 
to  the  legal  ought,  and  the  transcending  of  it.  For  society 
to  make  a  rule  is  to  generalize  the  ethical  opinion  of  indi- 
viduals ;  for  the  individual  to  get  an  ethical  rule  is  for  him 
to  particularize  on  the  basis  of  society's  conventional  rules. 

The  conclusion,  therefore,  is  this :  tliat  ( i )  ethical  rules 
are  either  already  embodied  in  the  sanctions  of  society,  or 
(2)  they  are  capable  of  being  so.  In  the  former  case 
(i)  the  individual's  rule  is  his  version  of  the  social  voice. 
To  him  it  is  ethical ;  not  only  must  all  men  observe  it  as 
law,  they  must  observe  it  also  as  right.  They  do  observe 
it  for  these  two  reasons  —  both  of  them.  And  the  socially 
legal  is  society's  version  of  the  individual's  right.  In  the 
latter  case  (2)  the  individual  legislates  his  rule  equally 
both  into  other  individuals  and  into  society ;  but,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  his  legislation  of  it  into  society  is  not  yet 
realized ;  society  has  not  yet  generalized  his  sense  of  right. 

352.  It  may  help  us  to  get  clearness  of  view  in  this 
matter  by  appealing  to  the  analogy  of  the  individual's 
growth,  to  which  we  have  found  that  of  society  to  bear  so 
close  a  resemblance.  The  individual's,  i.e.,  the  child's, 
sense  of  law  is  reached  through  a  twofold  relation  to  the 
personalities  about  him.  His  sense  of  the  personality  in 
which  law  is  embodied  represents  a  sort  of  generalization 
of  his  particular  thoughts,  and  also  a  sort  of  midway  stage 


Ethical  Rules  535 

between  those  personal  actions  which  he  understands  and 
those  which  he  is  still  to  imitate  and  grow  up  to.  His 
'  projective '  ethical  personality  includes  all  his  generali- 
zations, but  it  is  not  exhausted  by  them.  And  his  further 
generalizations  of  the  elements  of  this  personality  are 
conditioned  upon  his  assimilations  of  them  to  what  he 
already  has. 

So  with  society  over  against  the  individual.  Society 
represents  what  is  already  generalized  of  the  individual's 
intuitions  of  ethical  right.  But  the  further  ethical  intui- 
tions of  right,  on  the  part  of  the  individuals,  are  not 
exhausted  in  these  social  generalizations.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  only  as  the  individuals  attain  new  intuitions  and 
announce  them  that  society  can  generalize  them  in  turn 
in  new  institutions  and  in  laws.1 

So,  finally,  we  may  say  that  the  ethical  rules  of  the 
individual  involve  all  three  kinds  of  generality.  They  are 
to  apply  (i)  to  all  the  acts  of  the  individuals,  (2)  to  the 
acts  of  all  individuals,  and  (3)  they  are  to  have  the  pub- 
licity which  attaches  to  the  ethical  sanction  as  such.  But 
they  are  sanctioned  in  the  individual's  case  by  only  one 
sanction  :  his  own  ethical  sense.  He  is  to  act  impulsively, 
but  not  because  it  is  impulsive;  reasonably,  but  not 
because  it  is  reasonable ;  socially,  but  not  because  it  is 
prescribed.  He  must  act  ahvays  and  only  because  it  is 
right.  The  right  comes  to  the  individual  to  sum  up  the 
three,  and  to  give  all  his  conduct  its  final  sanction. 
He  can  recognize  no  other.  But  then  the  formulation  of 

1  Our  progress  in  administrative  matters  illustrates  this :  '  civil  service 
reform'  gradually  coming  to  be  general;  the  rule  of  the  'boss'  gradually 
disappearing;  municipal  reform  movements  gradually  purifying  city  govern- 
ment, etc. 


536  Rules  of  Conduct 

this  sense  of  right,  its  generalization,  is  directly  in  the  line 
of  the  social  prescriptions.  So,  in  the  outcome,  the  social 
and  the  private  duty  of  the  man  arc  in  essential  harmony. 

353.  It  remains  to  ask  whether  society's  ethical  is  ever 
at  variance  with  its  own  socially  prescribed.  This  would 
seem  from  what  has  been  said  to  be  a  superfluous  ques- 
tion ;  for  if  the  social  sanctions  arise  from  generalizations 
of  the  individual's  ethical  intuitions,  then  there  could 
be  no  socially  ethical  apart  from  what  is  actually  pre- 
scribed. But  this,  although  on  the  surface  logical, 
does  not  do  justice  to  the  complex  way  in  which  society 
grows.  We  saw  that  society's  attainments  are  not  made 
by  jumps.  Its  generalizations  involve  long  processes  of 
social  education  on  the  part  of  the  individuals.  Often  a 
generalization  is  reached  only  to  be  again  called  in  ques- 
tion. The  law  of  majorities  is  peculiarly  liable  to  mis- 
carry. A  single  individual  may  often  wield  authority 
enough  to  carry  or  to  obstruct  a  social  movement.  There 
are  ebbs  and  flows,  actions  and  reactions.  So  there  grows 
up  in  every  society  a  certain  discrepancy  between  what 
the  people  feel  ought  to  be,  and  what  really  is.  New 
things  are  agitated  ;  their  consequences  are  not  fully  seen  ; 
the  conservative  spirit  says  '  Let  well  enough  alone.'  And 
the  very  generalizing  process  by  which  society  reaches 
her  enactments  suggests  a  certain  discounting  of  the  new. 

Further,  there  is  a  great  derangement  of  interests  in- 
volved in  every  important  social  change,1  and  a  great 
series  of  divisions  in  the  occupations,  conditions  of  educa- 
tion, etc.,  of  this  man  and  that ;  so  that  all  are  not  equally 
competent  nor  willing  to  indorse  a  particular  course  of 
public  action. 

1  Cf.  above,  Chap.  V.,  §  3. 


Ethical  Rules  537 

Again,  there  often  grows  up,  through  the  discussion  of 
remote  topics,  a  sort  of  ethical  sense  that  an  old  institution 
is  out  of  date ;  while  yet  no  man  arises  to  think  the  case 
through,  and  take  the  lead  in  urging  reform.  These  in- 
fluences crystallize  to  make  the  reformer  very  often  a  man 
of  one  idea  and  an  offence  to  the  socially  satisfied  in  the 
community,  who  for  no  other  reason  refuse  to  follow  him.' 

In  fact,  changes  of  an  important  social  kind  often  burst 
with  sudden  and  overwhelming  force.  Their  preparatory 
stages  are  obscure,  and  their  influence  dumb.  They  are  a 
part  of  the  ethical  intuition  of  individuals ;  and  the  com- 
munity of  them  is  not  fully  suspected  until  the  prophet  of 
the  new  thought  comes  to  give  it  public  voice.  Then  the 
'  ought '  of  society  shows  itself  to  have  already  surpassed 
the  '  is,'  and  the  reformer  becomes  at  a  step  the  historian 
of  a  social  revolution.  The  question  is  simply  as  to  the 
exact  moment  when  the  new  thought  is  sufficiently  spread 
to  realize  itself  in  a  social  generalization.  When  it  does, 
then  it  is  no  longer  merely  the  individual's  ethical ;  it  is 
then  also  the  community's  ethical ;  but  until  it  is  actually 
made  a  part  of  what  is  socially  recognized  and  sanctioned, 
there  will  remain  in  reference  to  it  a  certain  discrepancy 
between  what  society  ought  to  do  and  what  it  does. 

354.  Another  very  interesting  case  of  discrepancy  be- 
tween the  social  '  ought '  and  the  social  '  is '  is  found  in  the 
phenomenon  of  contagion  of  crime  already  referred  to  in  an 
earlier  place.  The  fact  that  the  report  of  a  peculiar  form 
of  suicide,  for  example,  spread  abroad  by  the  newspapers, 
stimulates  other  persons  not  only  to  the  act  of  suicide  but 
even  to  the  adoption  of  the  same  peculiar  form  of  self- 
destruction,  shows  the  phenomenon  clearly.  There  are 
epidemics  of  crime  of  this  sort  or  that.  A  suggestion  of 


538  Rules  of  Conduct 

a  criminal  sort  will  spread  through  a  community ;  and  a 
sensational  story  will  excite  the  readers,  both  young  and 
old,  to  perform  the  crimes  with  which  the  narrative  con- 
cerns itself. 

In  such  a  case  as  lynching,  for  example,  society  really 
condemns,  by  its  better  public  utterances,  the  crimes 
•which  society  commits  and  propagates ;  just  as  in  the  case 
of  collective  action,  more  properly  so  called,  society  after- 
wards recovers  her  judgment  and  passes  a  more  normal 
and  withal  a  more  righteous  judgment.  In  these  cases  we 
have  the  social  ought-judgment  temporarily  suspended. 
A  series  of  social  facts  or  events  occur  which  in  no  wise 
represent  the  real  ethical  voice  of  the  community.  This 
is  a  phenomenon  of  regression,1  just  as  the  other  case  of 
antithesis  (spoken  of  in  Sect.  353)  is  a  phenomenon  of 
forward  movement  or  real  growth.  It  is  not  surprising, 
from  what  we  now  know  of  the  organization  of  the  social 
body,  that  these  phenomena  should  occur. 

The  ordinary  meaning,  however,  of  the  saying  that  social 
institutions  ought  to  be  different,  is  something  quite  other 
than  this;  it  is  the  expression  of  the  individual's  ethical 
judgment.  That  introduces  another  and  the  last  consider- 
ation to  be  brought  forward  in  this  matter  of  rules  of  con- 
duct. 

§  4.    The  Final  Conflict 

355.  In  an  earlier  connection  we  noted  that  all  possible 
conflicts,  of  a  general  kind,  which  might  arise  between  the 
individual  and  society,  are  conflicts  either  of  his  intelli- 
gence, or  of  his  ethical  sense,  with  the  social  order.  We 

1  That  is,  of  ethical  regression,  not  —  as  we  saw  above  —  of  reversion  to  an 
earlier  type  at  one  time  normal;  such  action  could  never  have  been  normal. 


The  Final  Conflict  539 

saw  also  that  conflicts  arising  from  his  intelligence  were 
largely  reducible  to  conflicts  between  the  intelligence  of 
him  and  the  conscience  of  the  rest  of  the  community ; 
inasmuch  as  the  social  order  represents  the  generalized 
ethical  sense.  The  only  way  for  a  man  to  carry  out  his 
protest,  in  such  a  case,  is  to  persuade  other  men,  until  he 
gets  his  opinion  adopted.  Then  the  conflict  ceases,  since 
then  the  reform  which  he  proposes  receives  ethical  and 
social  sanction.  But  in  the  case  of  the  ethical  protests  of 
single  men  against  the  social  order,  we  have  a  different 
phenomenon. 

This  sort  of  conflict  is  more  serious  and  more  profound, 
because  the  sanctions  involved  are  more  comprehensive. 
The  ethical  in  the  man  represents  the  essential  and  highest 
outcome  of  his  individual  nature  ;  this  on  one  hand.  The 
socially  established  represents  the  highest  outcome  of  the 
collective  activities  of  man;  that  on  the  other  hand.  What 
then  can  be  done,  in  the  case  of  conflict  between  these  two  ? 

Nothing  !     Nothing  can  be  done. 

It  is  the  case  of  the  fountain  running  higher  than  its 
source.  The  man  cannot  argue ;  morality  is  not  a  thing 
of  logical  sanction.  And,  moreover,  to  argue  a  violation 
of  law  —  in  serious  cases  —  is  to  commit  it,  in  the  eyes  of 
society.  Yet  society,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  suppress 
such  a  man,  although  too  often  that  is  what  results.  For 
it  is  just  through  the  ethical  reformers  that  society  learns 
her  own  mind  and  heart.  It  is  the  picture,  which  history 
shows,  of  the  seer  on  his  mountain.  He  speaks  in  riddles. 
He  stands  and  waits.  He  weeps.  To  be  sure,  he  may  be 
no  genuine  great-man  ;  he  may  be  a  fanatic,  a  lunatic,  a 
fraud,  —  but,  then,  he  may  be  a  prophet,  a  seer,  a  teacher 
of  nations ! 


540  Rules  of  Conduct 

This  is  the  final  and  irreducible  antinomy  of  society.  It 
shows  at  once  the  law  of  social  growth,  its  direction,  and 
its  goal.  It  shows  the  dialectic  of  growth  in  its  concrete 
social  form,  as  in  the  child's  obedience  we  see  it  in  its 
concrete  private  form.  Society  must  simply  listen  to  such 
a  man,  for  her  weal  or  woe,  as  the  child  listens  to  his 
father.  The  insight  is  on  the  seer's  side.  But  in  listening 
to  him,  and  doing  with  him,  she  is  reaching  for  her  own 
by  right.  He  is  of  her,  she  has  made  him,  he  clothes  her 
thought  in  a  diviner  form.  So  the  child  takes  from  his 
father.  He  takes  the  social  heritage  which  is  his  by  right 
of  birth.  He  takes  from  his  father,  and  so  lifts  himself 
to  his  father's  stature,  just  as  society  takes  from  the  great 
man  and  so  makes  his  insights  her  own. 

If  we  bring  this  finally  under  the  question  of  rules,  we 
reach  a  final  possibility :  that  in  the  ethical  realm  the 
individual  may  rule  himself  by  rules  which  are  in  advance 
of  those  which  society  prescribes,  and  also  exact  them.  This 
is  common,  not  only  with  the  moral  seer,  but  in  the  life 
of  us  all. 

All  of  us  have  our  moral  discontentments.  We  all 
think  that  society  should  be  reformed  in  certain  essential 
respects.  Just  to  this  degree  each  of  us  is  moved  to 
prescribe  a  rule  of  conduct  in  this  case  or  that ;  since  the 
publicity  of  the  ethical  judgment  carries  just  this  sort  of 
prescription.  The  reason  we  have  also  sufficiently  seen. 
It  arises  from  the  particularizing  of  the  individual,  work- 
ing as  an  active  force  in  the  social  complex,  and  from  the 
uneven  way  in  which  society  realizes  her  progress,  in  this 
respect  or  that.  Even  different  requirements  of  the  same 
general  principle  or  rule  remain  at  different  stages  of 
realization  in  social  institutions,  and  in  the  formulas  of 


The  Final  Conflict  541 

public  opinion ;  so  that  the  individual,  in  making  his  rule, 
finds  that  society  violates  it  here  and  there.  The  incon- 
sistency of  the  social  order,  from  a  moral  point  of  view, 
is  very  apparent,  and  many  pages  might  be  devoted  to 
giving  illustrations  of  it.  Just  as  the  individual  is  often 
condemned  for  law's  sake,  so  society  is  often  '  damned  for 
conscience'  sake.' 

Yet  we  are  able  to  see  that  both  cases  are  incidents  of 
the  larger  movement  which  our  discussions  have  led  us 
to  appreciate ;  a  movement  which  includes  the  individual 
with  his  oppositions  as  well  as  his  agreements,  and  society 
with  her  achievements  as  well  as  her  omissions. 


CHAPTER   XV 
RETROSPECT  :  SOCIETY  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

IT  only  remains  to  state,  in  certain  formal  sentences, 
some  of  the  more  general  conclusions  to  which  we  have 
come;  those  having  especial  reference  to  the  relation  of 
the  individual  to  society. 

356.  I.    The  examination   of  society  reveals   a  body  of 
rttles   of  conduct  with  sanctions   which   are  in  the   main 
adequate  for  the  private  life  of  the  individual.     This  fol- 
lows from  the  fact  that  the  institutions  and  sanctions  of 
society  are  in  their  origin  actually  generalizations  of  the 
intellectual  and  ethical  knowledges,  sentiments,  and  sanc- 
tions of  individuals,  handed  down  by  social  heredity. 

357.  II.    The  examination  of  the  individual  gives  rules 
and  sanctions  which  are  in  the  main  adequate  for  the  social 
life.     This  follows  from  the  fact  that  the  knowledges  and 
sanctions  of  the  individual  are  received  from  society  by 
social  heredity. 

358.  III.    Neither  of  the  above  principles  is  absolute. 

(a)  It  cannot  be  absolutely  true  that  the  examination 
of  society  gives  rules  and  sanctions  adequate  for  private 
life ;  since  only  the  generalized  part  of  human  life  is  em- 
bodied in  institutions.  The  individual  must  have  his 
private  rules  of  conduct  for  the  situations  of  life  which 
are  particular  to  his  knowledge  and  action.  This  brings 
his  private  rules  into  possible  conflict  with  society  to  the 

542 


Retrospect:  Society  and  the  Individual     543 

extent  to  which  he  is  original  in  his  thinking  and  in  his 
sentiments  ideal,  or  the  reverse. 

(#)  It  cannot  be  absolutely  true  that  the  examination 
of  the  individual  gives  rules  and  sanctions  adequate  to 
the  social  life ;  since  the  strictly  average  individual,  who 
would  correspond  to  the  generalizations  which  society 
embodies,  is  mythical.  Every  individual  is,  in  some  de- 
gree and  in  some  respects,  socially  untypical.1 

An  illustration  of  III.  (^)  is  seen  in  the  development  of 
high  intelligence  in  criminal  persons ;  and  an  illustration 
of  III.  (a)  is  seen  in  the  intelligent  development  of  society 
in  industrial  and  political  life,  while  its  ethical  institutions 
lag  behind  the  moral  sense  and  moral  rules  of  individuals. 

359.  IV.  The  principles  just  formulated  find  their  ground 
in  the  method  of  progress  of  society. 

(a)  The  method  of  progress  of  society  is  a  dialectic,  analo- 
gous to  the  '  dialectic  of  personal  groivth '  in  the  child  and 
man.  This  '  dialectic  of  social  growth '  is  a  circular 
movement  of  give-and-take  between  society  and  the  indi- 
vidual. The  form  of  collective  organization  cannot  be  social 
(general)  without  having  first  been  individual  (particular) ; 
and  the  matter  of  social  organization  cannot  be  individual 
(particular)  without  having  first  been  social  (general). 
There  must  always  be,  therefore,  at  every  stage  of  social 
progress,  a  balance  of  ungeneralized  form  in  the  indi- 
vidual, and  a  balance  of  unparticularized  material  in 
society.  And  the  rules  of  the  one  cannot  express  the 
balance  found  on  the  side  of  the  other. 

1  Readers  of  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen's  Science  of  Ethics  will  remember  his 
position  that  the  '  properties '  of  society  cannot  be  inferred  from  those  of  the 
individuals,  since  either  may  vary  independently  of  the  other  (loc,  «'/.,  pp. 
93  ff.)- 


544     Retrospect:  Society  and  the  Individual 

(6)  The  determination  of  social  progress  is  ethical  in  its 
direction  and  in  its  goal.  It  involves  a  publicity  of  values 
which  only  the  ethical  category  shows.  The  generaliza- 
tions which  society  effects  can  proceed  only  as  individuals 
act  ethically.  And  individuals  can  realize  new  intuitions 
of  an  ethical  kind  only  because  the  material  already  social 
is  again  capable  of  taking  on  ethical  form. 

(c)  A  final  conflict  of  an  ethical  kind  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  society  is  ahvays  possible.  It  is  soluble  only  by 
the  actual  growth  of  society  itself  in  the  particular  case,  or 
by  the  suppression  of  the  individual  who  revolts.  And 
society  solves  it  only  to  renew  it,  always. 

360.  V.  Finally,  our  outcome  may  be  gathered  up  in 
a  sentence  of  characterization  of  society  as  a  whole. 
Society,  we  may  say,  is  the  form  of  natural  organization 
which  ethical  personalities  come  into  in  their  growth.  So 
also,  on  the  side  of  the  individual,  we  may  define  ethical 
personality  as  the  form  of  natural  development  whicli  indi- 
viduals grow  into  who  live  in  social  relationships.  The 
true  analogy,  then,  is  not  that  which  likens  society  to  a 
physiological  organism,  but  rather  that  which  likens  it  to 
a  psychological  organization.  And  the  sort  of  psycho- 
logical organization  to  which  it  is  analogous  is  that  which 
is  found  in  the  individual  in  ideal  thinking. 


APPENDIX   A 

SOCIAL   HEREDITY   AND   ORGANIC   EVOLUTION 

THE  conclusions  reached  in  the  course  of  this  essay  are  consist- 
ent with  a  point  of  view  from  which  a  series  of  considerations  on 
organic  evolution  in  general  come  to  present  themselves.  The  prob- 
lems involved  in  the  theory  of  organic  development  fall  under  three 
heads :  those  in  Ontogeny  (or  individual  development),  Phytogeny  (or 
race  development),  and  Heredity.  The  general  method  of  personal 
adaptation  which,  in  the  social  sphere,  we  have  called  -social  heredity1 
extends  to  the  lower  forms  of  life  also ;  giving  a  view  of  determinate 
progress  in  evolution  due  to  social  modes  of  life.  I  shall  accordingly 
speak  first  of  its  influence  in  Ontogeny,  second  in  Phylogeny,  and  third 
in  Heredity. 

I.    Ontogeny  or  Individual  Development 

As  long  as  we  are  speaking  of  creatures  with  consciousness  enough 
to  learn  by  imitation,  and  so  to  come  under  the  principle  of  'social 
heredity,'  it  is  plain  that  certain  results  will  follow  as  regards  these 
creatures  themselves  in  consequence  of  their  adaptations. 

1 .  By  securing  adaptations  or  accommodations,  in  special  circum- 
stances such  as  those  of  a  social  kind,  the  creature  may  be  kept  alive 
in  the  struggle  for  existence.     This  influence  has  been  pointed  out  in 
a  great  variety  of  animal  species  by  various  writers  (Wallace.  Weis- 
mann,  Lloyd  Morgan,  Hudson). 

2.  By  this  means  those  congenital  variations  which  lend  themselves 
to  intelligent,  imitative,  and  social  accommodation  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  creatures,  are  screened  from  the  action  of  natural  selection  and  are 
so  kept  in  existence.     Other  congenital  variations  are  not  kept  thus  in 
existence.      So  there  arises,  partly  through  the  elimination  of  those 
individuals  which  cannot   make   the   accommodations,  a  widespread 
series  of  apparently  determinate  variations   (i.e.,  having  a  definite 
direction)  in  each  generation. 

3.  The  same  principle  secures  these  two  results,  also,  wherever  the 
creature  secures  adaptations  during  his  private  Y\i&  for  whatever  reason. 
Conscious  and  social  accommodation  is  not,  of  course,  the  only  sort. 
There  are  three  different  sources  of  modifications  in  biological  organ- 

2N  545 


546  Appendix  A 

isms.  There  are :  first,  the  physical  agencies  in  the  environment, 
which  produce  modifications  of  the  creature's  form  and  functions. 
They  include  chemical  agents,  strains,  contacts,  hindrances  to  growth, 
temperature  changes,  etc.  Second,  modifications  of  function  and 
structure  arise  from  the  activities  of  the  organism  itself  under  the 
law  of  use  and  disuse.  This  class  of  modifications  is  seen  in  a 
remarkable  way  in  plants  (Henslow,  Sachs,  Pfeffer),  and  in  micro- 
organisms (Bunge,  Loeb),  which  show  the  sort  of  adaptation  called 
the  •  selective  property '  by  such  writers  as  Romanes.  And,  third,  there 
are  the  intelligent,  imitative,  and  social  adaptations  which  are  spoken 
of  above,  and  which  show  the  clear  operation  of  the  principle  of '  social 
heredity.1 

All  these  influences  serve  to  effect  modifications  of  an  adaptive  kind 
in  the  creature,  during  its  lifetime ;  so  make  it  more  available  for  con- 
tinued life  under  the  operation  of  the  principle  of  natural  selection  ;  and 
thus  secure  the  great  end  of  setting  a  determinate  direction  in  the  gen- 
eration which  these  creatures  represent.  So  much  for  our  conclusion 
in  the  matter  of  ontogeny. 

II.   Phytogeny  or  Race  Evolution 

Certain  results,  in  the  province  of  phylogeny,  flow  directly  from  the 
preservation  of  creatures  which  accommodate  themselves  socially  or 
otherwise. 

First.  The  congenital  variations  of  subsequent  generations  are  dis- 
tributed about  the  mean  represented  by  the  creatures  preserved  through 
accommodation  in  the  earlier  generations.  Of  course  this  must  follow 
from  the  doctrine  that  the  characters  of  the  offspring  vary  about  a 
mean  between  the  characters  of  the  parents.  If  the  parents  have  been 
kept  alive  just  because  they  secured  a  certain  form  of  adaptation,  then 
their  children  will  be  so  endowed  as  to  secure  the  same  adaptation. 
So  a  determinate  direction  —  the  same  as  that  of  ontogenesis  —  is 
given  to  phylogenetic  evolution.  In  the  case  of  social  accommodation 
the  later  generations  will  tend  to  greater  sociality. 

Second.  The  mean  of  congenital  variation  being  thus  made  more 
determinate,  further  congenital  variations  follow  about  this  mean,  and 
these  variations  are  again  utilized  for  further  ontogenetic  adaptation. 
So  there  is  continual  progress  in  the  directions  set  by  ontogenetic 
adaptations ;  and,  in  the  case  of  social  adaptations,  in  social  lines. 

Third.  This  will  be  the  case  purely  through  physical  heredity,  which 
will  thus  be  brought  more  and  more  into  accord  with  the  direction  of 
social  heredity. 


Appendix  B  547 

III.   Heredity 

This  influence  I  have  called  •  organic  selection.'  It  has  certain  bear- 
ings upon  the  theories  of  hereditary  transmission.  The  constant 
determination  of  the  mean  of  variations,  and  through  it  also  that  of 
the  direction  of  phylogenetic  evolution,  gives  two  great  converging 
channels  of  hereditary  influence  without  appeal  to  the  Lamarckian 
principle  of  the  'inheritance  of  acquired  characters.' 

First.  It  gives  determinate  direction  to  organic  evolution  without  the 
direct  inheritance  of  acquired  characters,  since  it  shifts  the  mean  of  vari- 
ations in  the  young  in  the  direction  of  the  characters  acquired  by  the 
parents,  and  so  produces  the  same  results  as  if  these  characters  had 
been  actually  inherited. 

Second.  The  operation  of  <  social  heredity '  secures  the  transmission 
of  the  acquisitions  of  an  intelligent  and  social  kind,  without  the  inter- 
vention of  physical  heredity  at  all.  So  it  keeps  alive  a  series  of  func- 
tions —  as,  for  example,  speech  —  which  never  do  become  congenital ; 
or  it  keeps  them  alive  until  by  the  operation  of  organic  selection  they 
do  become  congenital.  The  general  co-operations  called  social  are  of 
this  kind  ;  and  the  method  of  their  transmission  '  as  detailed  actions '  is 
exclusively  that  of  '  social  heredity.1 

Third.  These  two  influences, '  organic  selection '  and '  social  heredity,' 
operate  in  a  parallel  way  in  all  creatures  of  much  biological  organization . 

Fourth.  This  general  influence  of  individual  accommodation,  whether 
social  or  otherwise,  in  setting  the  direction  of  subsequent  evolution 
under  natural  selection,  has  been  fully  described  under  the  phrase 
'  organic  selection,'  in  earlier  publications.1 


APPENDIX   B 

ON  'SELECTION' 

THE  various  sorts  of  '  Selection '  which  it  seems  well  to  distinguish 
in  different  connections  may  be  thrown  together  in  the  following  table, 
the  corresponding  sections  of  the  book  (as  far  as  there  are  such  sec- 
tions) being  in  each  case  given  in  brackets  in  the  table  beside  the 
description :  — 

1  See  American  Naturalist,  June,  July,  1896.  It  is  also  advocated  by  H.  F. 
Osborn  and  by  C.  Lloyd  Morgan.  References  to  the  literature  of  the  subject  are 
to  be  found  in  my  article  '  Determinate  Evolution,'  in  The  Psychological  Keview, 
July,  1897. 


548 


Appendix  B 


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Appendix  B  549 

Certain  remarks  may  be  added  to  which  I  give  numbers  correspond- 
ing to  those  topics  in  the  table  to  which  they  respectively  relate : 

4,  5,  6.  By  a  singular  coincidence  M.  Delage  uses  the  phrase 
'  Selection  organique  '  {Struct,  du  Protoplasnia,  etc.,  p.  732)  to  describe 
Roux'  '  Struggle  of  the  Parts ' ;  inasmuch  as  I  had  used  '  Organic 
Selection1  (Afent.  Devel.,  ist  ed.  p.  174)  for  the  similar  concept  which 
I  now  call  '  Functional  Selection '  (5).  Seeing  that  Weismann's  '  Intra- 
Selection '  (4)  was  directly  applied  by  him  to  his  interpretation  of 
Roux'  *  Struggle,'  Delage's  phrase  is  not  likely  to  have  currency  as  a 
substitute  for  Intra-Selection.  As  'Functional  Selection'  (5)  is  a 
special  means  of  motor  accommodation,  it  is  additional  (and  in  a  sense, 
subordinate)  to  Intra-Selection,  since  it  has  a.  functional  reference. 

7,  8,  9.  I  do  not  give  a  separate  heading  to  Professor  Lloyd  Mor- 
gan's phrase  'Conscious  Selection,'  since  it  will  be  seen  that,  as  he  uses 
it,  i.e.,  in  broad  antithesis  to  '  Natural  Selection,'  it  really  includes  all 
those  special  forms  of  selection  in  which  a  state  of  consciousness  plays 
the  selecting  role1  (7,  8,  9,  n,  12) ;  it  may  become  ambiguous  in  ref- 
erence to  cases  where  natural  selection  operates  on  mental  and  social 
variations  (5,  6,  10)  ;  and  even  when  applicable,  as  in  sexual  selec- 
tion (g),2  with  respect  to  the  '  means '  of  the  selection,  it  is  still  am- 
biguous with  respect  to  the  'result'  of  the  selection.  This  last 
ambiguity,  which  is  brought  out  in  the  table  (8,  g),3  makes  it  desirable 
to  confine  the  phrase  '  Conscious  Selection '  (if  used  at  all)  to  cases 
which  result  in  continuance  of  what  is  desirable  for  consciousness  or 
thought.  I  have  suggested  '  Personal  Selection '  (8)  for  the  selection 
by  personal  choice  of  individual  persons,  analogous  to  sexual  selection 
(9)  in  the  animal  world.  Furthermore,  Darwin's  '  Artificial  Selection  ' 
should  be  used,  as  he  used  it,  with  reference  only  to  securing  results 
by  induced  mating. 

10,  ii,  12.  In  all  the  sorts  of  so-called  'selection,'  considered  as 
factors  in  progress  from  generation  to  generation,  in  which  the  laws  of 
natural  selection  and  physical  reproduction  do  not  operate  together,  I 
think  it  is  extremely  desirable  that  we  discard  the  word  'selection' 

1  This,  indeed,  is  still  liable  to  the  question  as  to  whose  is  the  state  of  con- 
sciousness, giving  the  difference  (both   in   means   and  result)  seen  between 
'Artificial '  (7)  and  '  Sexual '  (9)  selection. 

2  Lloyd  Morgan,  Habit  and  Instinct,  pp.  219,  271. 

3  The  bird  '  selects '  (sexually)  for  the  sake  of  the  experience,  and  it  is  a 
secondary  result  that  she  is  also  thus  '  selected '  for  mating  with  the  male 
and  so  for  continuing  his  attractive  characters  with  her  own  characters  in  the 
offspring. 


550  Appendix  C 

in  Mfl,  and  give  to  each  case  a  name  which  shall  apply  to  it  alone. 
The  cases  of  the  preservation  of  individuals  and  groups  by  reason  of 
their  social  endowments  do  illustrate  natural  selection  with  physical 
reproduction,  so  I  propose  '  Social  Selection  '  (10)  for  that.  But  in  the 
instances  in  which  either  physical  heredity  is  not  operative  (12),  or  in 
which  it  is  not  the  only  means  of  transmission  (n),  we  cannot  secure 
clearness  without  new  terms  ;  for  these  two  cases  I  have  suggested  '  So- 
cial Suppression  '  (u)  and  'Social  Generalization'  (12).  The  phrase 
•  Imitative  Selection  •  is  given  in  the  table  alternatively  for  the  latter  (12), 
seeing  that  the  discussions  of  the  topic  usually  employ  the  term  '  Selec- 
tion '  and  use  the  '  Natural  Selection '  analogy  '  Selection '  may  be  used 
also  when  there  is  no  reference  to  race-progress  (and  so  no  danger  of 
misuse  of  the  biological  analogy)  ;  since  it  then  means  presumably  the 
'  conscious  choice '  of  psychology  and  of  pre-Darwinian  theory.1 


APPENDIX   C 

THE  COSMIC   AND  THE   MORAL* 

IN  his  paper  on  '  Natural  Law,  Evolution,  and  Ethics.'  in  this 
Journal  (July,  1895.  p.  489),  my  friend  Professor  Royce  presents 
under  the  caption  of  'Discussion'  an  interesting  attempt  to  reconcile 
the  '  cosmic '  with  the  '  ethical  process,'  apropos  of  the  current  dis- 
cussions raised  by  Mr.  Huxley's  much-talked-of  paper  on  •  Evolution 
and  Ethics.'  The  development  given  by  Mr.  Royce  is  based  upon  the 
well-known  distinction  between  the  *  world  of  description '  and  the 
'  world  of  appreciation '  of  the  same  author's  work.  The  Spirit  of 
Modern  Philosophy.  He  also  refers  to  the  article  of  his  on  •  The 
External  World  and  the  Social  Consciousness '  in  the  Philosophical 
Review  (September,  1894).  The  currency  already  attained  by  these 
views  of  Mr.  Royce  makes  it  unnecessary  that  I  should  stop  long  on 
the  preliminaries  of  his  present  paper. 

1  It  may  be  well  to  add  that  this  table  is  not  intended  to  be  altogether 
exhaustive  from  the  biological  standpoint.  For  example.  Professor  Minot's 
'  P.ist-Selection '  does  not  fall  readily  into  the  scheme.  Nor  are  the  different 
headings  in  all  cases  exclusive  of  one  another;  Darwin  really  included  both 
the  cases  (I  and  II)  of  Natural  Selection  under  the  single  phrase;  and  justly 
so,  seeing  that  they  illustrate  a  single  principle. 

a  Reprinted  from  the  Int.  Jour  n.  of  Ethics,  Oct.,  1895. 


Appendix  C  551 

Briefly,  the  argument  is  this :  All  the  formulas  of  natural  science  are 
descriptions  of  phenomena  which  are  held  together  just  for  the  pur- 
poses of  natural  science.  The  growth  of  the  thought  of  the  objective 
is,  genetically,  the  sorting  out  and  grouping  by  these  formulas  of  the 
items  of  experience  which  have  two  general  characters  :  they  are  capa- 
ble of  -description,1  and  also  of  '  social  verification.'  The  descrip- 
tion is  necessary  to  their  being  statable  in  interconnected  wholes  or 
groups :  the  verification  is  necessary  to  their  being  the  matter  of  sci- 
ence, i.e.,  objectively  there  for  the  discovery  of  all  men  alike.  The 
remaining  contents  of  experience,  not  presenting  these  characters,  are 
not  thrown  together  under  the  statement  of  natural  laws,  or  '  cosmic 
process' :  they  are  capricious,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  not  describa- 
ble  ;  and  they  are  subjective,  in  the  sense  that  they  are  not  verifiable. 
They  are  therefore  set  off  against  the  cosmic  process :  and  when  we 
come  to  see  their  characters  as  involving  desire,  with  certain  ingre- 
dients of  the  desirable  known  as  '  the  ideal,'  the  opposition  crystal- 
lizes into  that  of  the  '  ethical '  over  against  the  '  cosmic  process.'  The 
distinction  is,  therefore,  genetically  one  of  the  method  and  flow  of  expe- 
rience ;  it  does  not  seem  to  require  a  corresponding  division  or  dualism 
in  the  nature  of  reality  itself. 

So  far  Mr.  Royce's  discussion  seems  to  me  to  be  very  clear  and,  in 
its  main  contention,  true.  I  think  the  distinction  in  consciousness, 
when  genetically  considered,  between  the  two  points  of  view  of  '  de- 
scription' and  'appreciation'  is  the  root  of  opposition  between  the 
cosmic  and  the  ethical.  I  am  not  able,  however,  to  accept  his  tests 
of  the  objective ;  and  it  may  not  be  out  of  place,  in  view  of  the  active 
discussions  now  going  on,  to  examine  his  argument  a  little  in  detail.1 

In  the  first  place,  Mr.  Royce  seems,  after  getting  consciousness  into 
this  dilemma  of  the  necessary  antithesis  between  the  '  ought '  and  the 
'  is,'  to  find  no  psychological  way  of  getting  consciousness  out  of  it. 
He  seems  to  say :  '  Remain  a  man  of  science  and  the  moral  sense  is 
an  illusion '  —  '  remain  a  moralist  and  the  man  of  science  is  a  liar  ! ' 
No  man  can  be  both  at  once.  The  only  way  that  a  reconciliation  can 
be  effected  is  by  a  philosophy  which  still  recognizes  the  opposition,  it 
is  true,  but  is  able  to  reinforce  the  statement  of  one  side  with  pro- 
founder  reasons.  The  ethical  process  gets  reinforced  in  Professor 
Royce's  philosophy,  and  so  the  protest  of  the  spirit  is  heard  in  the 
court  of  claims  of  ultimate  reality.  Science  is  tolerated,  then,  not 
justified  ultimately. 

1  Cf.  the  further  remarks  in  Appendix  E. 


552  Appendix  C 

Now  this  theory,  it  seems,  does  not  '  reconcile '  the  two  processes  ; 
it  merely  gives  us  an  interesting  account  of  the  genesis  of  the  opposi- 
tion. It  seems  to  require,  both  in  its  account  of  the  description  of 
phenomena  and  in  that  of  the  meaning  of  desire,  the  same  opposition 
between  a  unity  which  is  merely  recognized  as  there,  and  a  unity  which 
is  demanded,  although  not  there.  Professor  Royce  leaves  the  desire 
urging  on  to  something  essentially  indescribable  and  unverifiable.  He 
says  :  "  The  object  of  our  ideal  is  desirable  not  in  so  far  as  it  is  describa- 
ble,  and,  again  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  yet  verifiable  [italics  his]. 
Herein,  then,  lies  a  double  contrast  between  the  natural  fact  as  such, 
and  the  object  of  desire  as  such."  With  this  account  of  desire  we 
should  expect  failure  to  get  any  real  reconciliation ;  for  it  confuses  the 
'  object '  of  desire  with  the  fact  that  with  the  object  there  is  what  we 
call,  very  obscurely  often,  the  accompanying  sense  of  an  ideal.  But 
when  we  come  to  distinguish  between  the  object  and  this  ideal  accom- 
paniment, we  see  that  the  object  is  both  describable  and  verifiable ; * 
and  then  we  see  that  through  the  attainment  of  it  —  if  perchance  we 
do  attain  it  —  we  have  brought  the  ideal  which  it  stood  for  nearer  to 
a  similar  construction.  It,  too,  becomes  now  in  so  far  also  describable 
and  verifiable,  not  now,  however,  as  ideal,  but  as  fact.  The  sense 
called  ideal  still  goes  on  to  attach  to  a  further  object  of  desire.  But 
inasmuch  as  by  the  successful  pursuit  of  this  object,  then  and  there, 
we  have  so  far  realized  our  ideal,  in  so  far  we  have  turned  the  '  ought ' 
into  the  '  is ' :  we  have  made  natural  history  out  of  the  objects  of  our 
ethical  cravings.  May  not  this  give  a  real  reconciliation  of  the  two 
points  of  view,  rather  than  an  account  merely  of  the  opposition  which 
remains  to  plague  Mr.  Royce? 

The  sense  of  ought,  then,  from  my  point  of  view,  is  the  anticipation 
of  more  experience,  not  yet  treated  under  the  rubrics  of  description : 
but  as  far  as  it  is  identified  with  any  object  of  desire,  it  is  thought  to 
exemplify  the  canons  of  description  of  that  object  as  being  most  nearly 
the  sort  of  experience  that  expectation  is  reaching  out  after.  And 
natural  science,  the  '  cosmic  process,1  is  the  same  series  read  back- 
wards. It  is  experience  fully  described,  and  hence  rid  of  that  colouring 
of  expectation  and  desire  which,  when  it  was  looked  at  the  other  way. 
made  it  the  vehicle  for  the  realization  of  the  ideal. 

When  we  come  to  the  metaphysical  point  of  view  we  find  the  same 
criticism  of  Mr.  Royce  in  order.  What  shall  we  say  to  a  '  reconcilia- 
tion '  which  still,  as  I  think,  allows  the  two  parties  to  the  controversy 
each  to  establish  his  own  side  by  cutting  off  half  of  consciousness  and 

1  Jt  is  the  '  thing  of  fact '  described  in  Sect.  242  f. 


Appendix  C  553 

throwing  it  away?  The  positivist  may  say:  "From  profound  philo- 
sophical reasons,  I  find  consciousness  justified  in  its  descriptions ;  so 
it  is  under  illusion  in  its  appreciations."  And  the  idealist  turns  the 
tables,  justifying  himself  also  on  profound  philosophical  grounds.  The 
reason  that  they  can  do  this  is  found  in  Professor  Royce's  failure  to 
find  an  actual  identity  anywhere  between  the  experiences  described 
and  the  good  desired  :  instead  of  holding  that  the  '  is '  is  always,  in  so 
far,  also  the  '  ought '  (that  is,  so  far  as  it  is  the  legitimate  outcome  of  the 
cosmic  process,  i.e.,  is  statable  universally,  and  is  not  a  mere  accident)  ; 
but  that,  by  the  very  movement  by  which  consciousness  gets  it  as  an 
'  is,'  it  has  to  transcend  it  in  a  search  for  a  further  '  ought.'  But  if 
this  is  true,  —  if  the  series  is  one  and  the  antithesis  arises  from  the 
two  points  of  view,  'prospective  and  retrospective,1  from  which  it  is 
viewed,  —  then  a  being  who  could  hold  both  points  of  view  adequately 
at  once,  would  know  no  such  opposition.  He  would  '  appreciate '  the 
world  as  good  without  being  under  illusion,  and  also  describe  it  as  true 
without  being  a  liar. 

This  inadequacy,  as  I  venture  to  think  it,  of  Mr.  Royce's  paper,  may 
be  brought  out  also  by  the  consideration  of  one  other  point.  We 
may  ask  how  one  is  to  meet  the  objection  that  in  giving  a  natural  his- 
tory of  the  distinction  between  the  '  is '  and  the  '  ought '  one  lays 
himself  open  to  the  charge  of  giving  exclusive  weight  to  the  '  is '  after 
all.  The  very  sense  of  appreciation  is  itself  a  cosmic  product:  how 
then  can  it  have  any  meaning  apart  from  the  details  of  history  out  of 
which  it  has  arisen  ?  This  very  dilemma  seems  to  me  to  be  the  fruitful 
source  of  confusion  in  Mr.  Huxley's  Address.  He  treats  the  'ought' 
in  the  body  of  the  Address  as  in  essential  opposition  to  the  '  cosmic 
is ' ;  and  in  an  appendix  says  it  is  nevertheless  due  to  the  principle  of 
selection.  If  it  is  due  to  selection,  we  may  ask,  must  it  not  have  ex- 
isted as  a  fact,  a  variation,  say,  before  it  was  selected  ?  But  if  so,  how 
can  it  as  a  fact  have  been  in  essential  opposition  to  the  series  of  facts 
which  the  theory  of  survival  for  utility  presupposes?  Now,  I  think 
Professor  Royce's  paper  does  not  answer  this  question.  He  seems  to 
leave  a  gap  between  the  sense  of  the  thing  and  the  sense  of  its  value ; 
he  says,  however,  that  the  sense  of  value  attaches  to  all  things ;  and 
by  making  the  essentially  valuable  aspect  of  the  thing  indescribable 
and  unverifiable,  he  says  in  effect  that  it  cannot  be  a  natural  history 
outcome.1 

On  the  contrary,  apart  from  details  of  natural  history  which  I  have 

1 1  know  he  gives  it  a  natural  history  in  the  individual's  private  experience, 
but  that  seems  to  be,  in  a  sense,  apart  from  the  cosmic  movement. 


554  Appendix  C 

tried  to  supply  elsewhere,1  I  think  the  matter  described  by  the  '  is'  is 
the  inadequate  content  of  that  which  we  feel  'ought'  to  be;  and  the 
description  of  what  '  oughted  '  to  be,  i.e.,  what  was  the  object  of  de- 
scription of  a  past  'ought,'  is  what  'is.'  In  short,  the  'ought'  is  a 
function  of  a  mental  content,  of  a  descriptive  '  is,'  —  a  motor  function, 
I  think,  —  and  so  like  every  other  function  of  content  has  its  own 
natural  history  as  a  single  fact ;  but  its  meaning  is  progressive,  pro- 
spective, and  the  discovery  of  its  full  meaning  still  remains  a  question 
apart  from  its  evolutipn. 

I  can  say,  therefore,  with  Professor  Royce  :  '  Novelty  is  a  conditio  sine 
qua  non  of  all  ideal  value  when  regarded  from  a  temporal  point  of 
view ;  '  but  I  must  add  that  novelty,  as  such,  is  not  the  only  conditio 
sine  qua  non.  Rather  is  the  full  fact  what  is  called  in  his  context  the 
'interestingly  novel.'  For  an  object  of  desire  there  must  be  enough 
description  to  make  the  thing  interesting ;  and  this  description  is  the 
essential  content.  Realize  the  desire,  and  you  in  so  far  add  to  the 
description,  and  so  set  another  content  for  further  desire.  It  is  just  this 
progressively  built  up  content,  viewed  first  from  the  point  of  view  of 
novelty,  then  from  that  of  history,  then  from  that  of  novelty  again, 
that  the  final  identity  of  reality  must  rest  upon.  An  all-comprehen- 
sive experience  would  be  appreciated  as  the  all-good.  So  I  say  '  no ' 
to  this  sentence  of  our  author :  "  There  is  no  chance  of  reconciling  the 
metaphysically  real  and  ultimate  universality  of  the  so-called  cosmical 
processes,  or  processes  according  to  describably  rigid  laws,  with  any 
even  remotely  ethical  interpretation  of  the  same  reality."  Rather  must 
reality,  when  viewed  metaphysically,  be  both  rigidly  true  and  divinely 
fair  —  as  far  as  metaphysics  may  allow  us  to  hold  to  either  category  as 
more  than  a  human  analogy. 

In  conclusion.  I  do  not  think  this  is  the  only  topic  the  discussion 
of  which  calls  for  a  reconciliation  of  the  same  two  points  of  view. 
I  have  developed,  in  a  paper  in  the  Psychological  Review  (Nov.  1895, 
'The  Origin  of  a  Thing  and  its  Nature')  a  general  distinction  of 
'prospective'  and  'retrospective'  points  of  view  under  which  that  be- 
tween '  description  '  and  '  appreciation  '  may  be  subsumed.  In  general. 
I  may  add  that  the  distinction,  genetically  considered,  is  that  which  I 
have  endeavoured  to  set  out  in  exteiiso,  and  in  part  from  a  biological 
point  of  view,  under  the  terms  '  Habit '  and  '  Accommodation.1  in  my 
work  on  .\fental  Development.  Under  these  principles,  respectively, 
the  'is'  and  the  'ought'  find  their  genesis.  And  with  this  the  main 
psychological  position  of  Professor  Royce  is,  I  think,  in  harmony. 

1  See  my  Menial  Development,  pp.  341  ft 


Appendix  D  555 


APPENDIX    D 

THE   GENESIS  OF  SOCIALITY 

PROFESSOR  G.  A.  TAWNEY,  of  Beloit  College,  in  a  review  of  my 
work  on  Mental  Development,  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
July,  1897,  pp.  520  f.,  gives  what  in  his  view  would  be  the  derivation 
of  sociality  in  the  animal  consciousness,  provided  we  assume  only  the 
tendency  to  '  circular '  or  '  imitative  '  reaction  in  creatures  which  actually 
live  together.  He  says :  "  Let  us  imagine  two  primitive  organisms, 
A  and  B,  existing  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  each  other.  A  is 
approached  by  some  hostile  object  X,  with  which  B  also  at  some  time 
or  other  has  had  to  do.  X  approaches  A,  and  B's  glimpse  of  him 
revives  his  own  past  experiences  with  him.  There  is  revival  of  pain, 
fear,  and  movements  of  flight  on  B's  part.  [These  movements  would 
be  substantially  the  same  as  those  also  being  executed  by  A.]  1  Sup- 
pose, however,  that  this  flight  does  not  suffice  to  relieve  B  of  the  sight 
of  X  approaching,  and,  let  us  say,  attacking  A.  so  that  no  movement 
puts  an  end  to  the  revival  experiences  of  B.  Excitement,  which  means 
heightened  discharge,  gives  rise  to  variations  of  movement,  and  all  the 
time  the  movements  of  A  are  setting  copies  from  without  for  the  reac- 
tions of  B.  The  law  of  imitation  implies  that  B's  conduct  under  such 
circumstances  will  resemble  A's  ultimately.  Let  us  again  suppose  that 
together  they  succeed  in  driving  off  X,  and  enjoy  together  the  feelings 
of  relief,  i.e.,  pleasure,  which  follow.  Here  is  a  copy  in  the  direc- 
tion of  co-operative  conduct  set  for  future  imitation.  Perhaps  such 
copies  would  in  time  grow  numerous,  and  through  tradition  become 
the  social  habit." 

•  This  illustration  makes,  I  think,  the  true  suppositions,  and  with  some 
differences  of  detail,  I  am  able  to  accept  Professor  Tawney's  use  of  it. 
I  should  say  —  speaking  of  the  unreflective  sociality  of  the  animals  — 
that  if  A  and  B  live  together  and  react  imitatively  to  common  experi- 
ences, that  in  itself  produces  sociality.  For  (i)  B,  seeing  A  act  as  he 
also  has  acted  in  the  presence  of  X,  has  reinstated  in  him  thus  the 
memory-copy-system,  however  simple,  of  his  own  earlier  action,  and 
reacts  imitatively  on  this.  This  is  just  the  objective  reaction  of  sympa- 
thy, and  becomes  subjective  sympathy,  as  different  from  real  experience 
of  the  same  kind,  in  so  far  as  A  comes  to  realize  a  distinction  between 
this  case  and  that  in  which  he  is  himself  threatened  by  X.  (2)  The 

1  Added  by  the  present  writer. 


556  Appendix  D 

actual  sameness  of  conduct,  whether  produced  as  above  by  B's  sight 
of  A's  action,  or  directly  by  the  same  X-experience  in  both  A  and  B, 
produces  results  in  a  measure  co-operative.  This.  I  take  it,  is  sufficient 
for  the  operation  of  natural  selection,  which  on  this  basis  produces 
'colonies 'of  similar  creatures.  But  in  such  experiences  it  would  be 
quite  artificial  to  suppose  that  no  memory  of  the  struggles,  cries,  en- 
deavours, of  A  would  linger  in  the  consciousness  of  B  as  a  part  of  his 
copy-system  of  the  situation  for  future  action.  Yet  if  such  elements 
do  enter  into  his  memory-system,  then  on  future  occasions  it  would  be 
only  to  reinstate  his  requisite  imitative  copy  for  him  to  enter  actively 
into  similar  co-operations.  This  again  would  be  a  great  gain  in  the 
actual  possibilities  of  united  action,  and  would  again  survive  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  (3)  Whenever  the  situation  depicted  by  Adam 
Smith's  illustrations  was  realized,  —  cases  involving  the  sight  of  both 
an  aggressor  and  an  aggressee,  with  their  respective  claims  upon  the 
onlooker,  B,  for  sympathy,  —  the  creature  whose  shape,  movements,  pos- 
tures, cries,  etc.,  were  like  those  of  B  would  be  the  one  which  would 
supply  B's  copy-system,  and  the  one  with  which  his  co-operations  would 
arise ;  that  is,  the  animal  of  the  same  kind.  So  subjective  sympathy 
would  be  at  once  a  '  consciousness  of  kind,'  and  the  objective  reactions 
would  be  indications  of  'kind.' 

So  I  hold  that  actual  life  together,  of  creatures  having  the  tendency 
to  circular  or  imitative  reaction,  results  inevitably  in  sympathy,  co-opera- 
tion, sociality  of  the  sort  found  in  animals  apart  from  fixed  instincts  ;  * 
and  it  is  actually  carried  on  by  tradition.2  Moreover,  all  the  while,  the 
species  is  accumulating  variations  by  the  aid  of  organic  selection,  and 
so  special  co-operations  gradually  take  on  the  instinctive  forms  found  in 
gregarious  animal  '  companies.' 

1  The  biological  necessity  for  the  full  organization  of  the  sexual  instinct  at 
a  very  early  period  makes  it  unlikely  that  that  is  to  be  looked  to  for  the  germ 
of  the  social  tendency,  in  the  sense  that  in  sexual  sociality  the  animal  formed 
his  lessons  in  tolerance  and  co-operation.     The  evidence  collected  by  Top- 
inard,  already  referred  to  (Sect.  139,  note),  goes  to  show  the  widest  variation 
as  between  family  life,  springing  from  sexual  needs,  and  general  sociality. 
Yet  a  distinction  may  be  made  between  sexual  sociality  in  general  and  the 
restricted  and  more  exclusive  form  of  it  found  in  family  life.     This  Topinard 
recognizes  in  saying  that  polygamous  animals  are  more  'social'  than  monoga- 
mous (  The  Monist,  January,  1897,  p.  250). 

2  Darwin  notes  that  after  the  acquisition  of  a  fortunate  co-operation  by  cer- 
tain individuals,  imitation  could  be  counted  on  to  spread  it  abroad  and  keep 
it  going  (Desffnt  of  Man,  I.,  pp.  157-159). 


Appendix  E  557 

In  man,  who  goes  on  to  organize  experience  in  the  form  of  a  self, 
the  '  dialectic  of  personal  growth  '  produces  the  distinction  between  ego 
and  alter ;  and  reflective  sociality  takes  the  place  of  the  spontaneous 
and  instinctive  forms.  As  Dr.  Tawney  says  in  the  same  notice  :  "  The 
sense  of  subjectivity  develops  as  the  reflex  of  those  established  habits 
of  social  co-operation  and  organization  which  have  already  been  formed ; 
the  social  consciousness  is  the  sense  of  self  in  relation  with  other 
selves." 

The  attribute  of '  publicity,' l  which  has  its  genesis  as  the  crowning 
social  outcome  of  the  '  dialectic  of  personal  growth,'  is  also  summed 
up  so  neatly  by  Dr.  Tawney  in  the  same  place,  that  I  may  quote  it,  at 
the  same  time  not  taking  space  to  make  the  qualifications  under 
which  the  developments  of  the  earlier  pages  would  support  just  the 
formula  which  he  attributes  to  me.  He  says  :  "  The  law  of  Kant,  •  So 
act  that  the  principle  of  your  conduct  may  be  fit  for  universal  law,'  is 
to  the  individual,  subjectively  speaking :  '  So  act  that  all  the  members 
of  the  social  group  to  which  you  belong,  i.e.,  all  your  other  selves  ^ 
may  know  your  conduct  without  pain  to  yourself?  " 


APPENDIX    E 

THE  PERSONAL  AND  SOCIAL  SENSE « 

The  Meanings  of  Self :  the  Reality  of  Self .     F.  H.  BRADLEY.     Chaps. 
IX.-X.  of  the  work  'Appearance  and   Reality.'     London,  Swan 
Sonnenschein  &  Co;  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1893. 
Mr.  Bradley  distinguishes  eight  meanings  of  '  Self.'     He  criticises 
them  all  and  finds  the  following  outcome.     Nowhere  is  there  any  con- 
tent of  consciousness  which  is  consistently  and  always  called  '  Self.1 
There   is  the   anthropological  self,  a  cross-section  of  consciousness, 
Hume's  bundle  of  present  states  —  which  changes,  of  course.     There  is 
the  organized  self  of  thought  which  proceeds  upon  ever  new  materials 
of  organization.     There  is  the  quasi-permanent  self  of  memory  and 
personal  identity :    but  what  is  it  that  is  permanent  ?     There  is  the 
sentient  self  which  finds  itself  subject  to  the  contrasts,  fluxes,  relativi- 
ties of  feeling,  and  so  on.     The  actual  process  of  reflection  on  self  is 

1  Sects.  198  ff.  and  325  ff. 

2  From  The  Psychological  Review,  Nov.j  1894. 


558  Appendix  E 

depicted  by  Mr.  Bradley  in  an  analysis  which  is  wonderfully  acute  and 
obviously  true ;  a  landmark,  I  think,  in  the  history  of  that  enigma,  the 
so-called  •  rational  subject.1  He  depicts  a  perpetual  ego-play  of  content- 
elements  over  against  one  another  in  their  relation  of  subject  and  object. 
At  one  time  a  certain  arc  in  the  trajectory  of  consciousness  assumes 
the  role  of  self  over  against  another  arc  which  it  takes  for  its  object. 
Then,  at  another  time,  the  ego-section  slides  further  around,  so  to 
speak.  But  however  long  you  chase  it,  it  is  always  part  of  the  trajec- 
tory, part  of  the  content  —  the  ego  is;  and  the  object  is  another  part. 
And  the  unity  which  contains  the  whole  play,  this  is  the  only  unity  there 
is.  It  is  a  unity  of  feeling.  Always,  there  is  zfundus  of  feeling.  This 
ego-play  I  find  to  be  very  truly  described ;  try  as  one  will  to  reflect  on 
self,  he  finds  a  content  —  that  which  is  at  that  moment  claiming  to  be 
the  subject  —  setting  itself  over  against  another  content  and  calling  it 
'me 1 ;  and  just  as  soon  as  one  tries  to  find  out  what  this  subject-content 
is,  he  is  able  in  a  measure  to  do  so ;  which  means  that  that  content  has 
now  taken  the  place  of  the  object-content,  and  so  is  no  longer  I,  but  has 
become  me.  And  all  the  time  there  is  a  'feeling'  of  the  whole  play, 
and  of  the  background,  as  itself  upholding  the  I  and  linking  it  into 
some  sort  of  unity  with  the  me. 

The  same  analysis  holds,  says  Bradley,  also  for  the  'active'  self— 
the  self  of  volition  and  desire.  It  seems  possible  to  turn  upon  any 
element  in  the  self  that  desires,  and  desire  it  to  be  different ;  that  is, 
to  treat  it  as  a  not-self  upon  which  the  action  of  the  self  desiring  is  to 
terminate.  This  leads  to  a  subtle  deduction  of  the  sense  of  self-activity, 
which  is  shown  to  be  due  to  change  in  content.  For  example,  the  I 
which  desires  finds  in  its  object  new  elements  of  content  fit  to  be  in- 
cluded in  the  me,  and  by  its  expansion  to  include  these  elements  it  sets 
itself  over  against  its  former  I-elements,  thus  converting  them  into  ob- 
jective me-elements.  This  expansion  and  shifting  of  content-elements 
through  which  certain  constant  I-elements  are  present  —  this  is  felt  as 
self-activity.  Even  when  the  elements  reached  out  after  as  fit  for  I- 
elements  are  not  explicit,  —  i.e.,  when  there  is  no  explicit  desire, —  even 
then  self-activity  is  felt.  This  is  due,  Bradley  thinks,  to  the  implicit 
presence  of  these  elements  already  in  the  original  I-content,  but  in  such 
a  way  that  the  entire  content  as  a  group  is  inhibited  by  the  explicit 
elements.  The  release  of  this  inhibition  is  then  felt  as  self-activity. 

This  deduction,  it  is  clear,  is  capable  of  either  a  Herbartian  or  a 
Wundtian  construction  (see  notice  of  Mackensie's  paper  below):  it 
assumes,  with  both  Herbart  and  Wundt,  conscious  self-activity  beneath 
the  threshold  of  explicit  desire.  With  this  assumption  I  do  not  agree. 


Appendix  E  559 

There  is  really  no  warrant  for  any  such  sort  of  self-activity.  Con- 
sciousness bears  witness,  on  the  contrary,  to  a  very  clear  aloofness  of 
the  I-content  from  both  the  members  of  the  change  of  content  taking 
place  in  a  'me'  which  is  not  the  object  of  desire.  Note  the  case  of 
involuntary  attention  with  its  distractions,  and  the  changes  wrought  in 
the  me  content  by  hypnotic  suggestion :  these  have  no  feeling  of  self- 
activity.1  Nor  has  the  progress  of  a  purely  objective  %  train  of  ideas.' 
And  even  in  the  instance  of  blind  unratified  impulse,  there  is  a  feeling 
of '  run-away '  in  the  machinery,  of  lack  of  self-implication,  which  is  due 
not  to  the  implicit  presence  of  the  elements  which  are  explicitly  pres- 
ent in  desire,  but  to  the  weakness  of  another  content  which  is  ex- 
plicitly desired.  This  latter  content  is  inhibited  and  overcome,  and 
the  undesired  takes  place  because  of  the  reverse  outcome  of  the  same 
process  as  that  of  explicit  desire.  Mr.  Bradley  holds  the  necessity 
for  some  content-element  ideally  held  for  realization ;  but,  in  saying 
that  after  all  it  may  be  implicit,  he  seems  to  give  up  his  analysis  for 
the  sake  of  accounting  for  a  myth.  The  idea  said  to  be  implicit  is  really 
a  part  already  of  the  old  felt  content ;  otherwise  there  is  mere  change 
—  not  activity  —  in  which  the  felt  content  maintains  itself  successfully 
against  the  ideal  content.  Hence  the  sense  of  incompleteness,  disap- 
pointment, relative  irresponsibility,  in  such  activities,  e.g.,  as  saying  '  I 
will  not  consent,'  and  consenting.  Put  in  symbols,  there  seems  to  be 
little  difference  here  between  Mr.  Bradley's  view  and  mine.  But  he, 
in  fact,  finds  self-activity  felt  towards  what  is  not  desired ;  I  rather 
find  activity,  largely  not  that  of  self,  felt  toward  that  which  inhibits 
what  is  desired.  In  the  concrete  cases  which  psychology  actually 
knows  it  makes  a  difference.2 

1  Cf.  my  volume  on  Feeling  and  Will,  Chap.  XII.,  §§  3-6. 

2  With  this  criticism  of  Mr.  Bradley's  view  the  following  remarks  made  by 
him  in  his  second  edition  (p.  607)  should  be  noted,  seeing  that  they  show 
more  agreement  than  I  had  supposed :  "  But  that  I  failed  to  be  clear  is  evident 
both  from  Mr.  Stout's  criticism  and  from  some  interesting  remarks  by  Profes- 
sor Baldwin  in  the  Psychological  Revieiu,  Vol.  I.,  No.  6.     The  relation  of  felt 
activity  to  desire,  and  the  possibility  of  their  independence,  and  of  the  priority 
of  one  to  the  other,  is  to  my  mind  a  very  difficult  question  ;  but  I  should  add 
that  to  my  mind  it  is  not  a  very  important  one.     I  hope  that  both  Mr.  Stout 
and  Professor  Baldwin  will  see  from  the  above  that  my  failure  was  to  some 
extent  one  merely  of  expression,  and  that  our  respective  divergence  is  not  as 
great  as  at  first  sight  it  might  appear  to  be.     As  to  the  absence  of  felt  self- 
activity  in  certain  states  of  mind,  I  may  add  that  I  am  wholly  and  entirely  at 
one  with  Professor  Baldwin."     The  reader  should  look  up  Mr.  Bradley's  new 
statement. 


560  Appendix  E 

This  analysis' of  self-activity  —  or  any  other  which  proceeds  upon 
what  Mr.  Bradley  calls  'the  end  in  the  beginning'  —  shows  itself  im- 
portant in  relation  to  the  doctrine  of  imitative  development  worked 
out  by  recent  writers.  The  object  of  desire,  explicit  or  through  habit 
implicit,  is  set  up  for  realization.  This  is  what  I  have  called  a  '  copy 
for  imitation'  in  my  theory,  such  a  copy  as  an  imitative  view  of  volition 
requires.1  It  seems  then  that  this  citadel  of  actiis  punts,  this  fount  of 
originality  and  unrelated  self-determination,  is  also  capable  of  a  natural 
construction.  The  pedagogical  applications  are  very  important.  For 
•'self-activity'  is  talked  of  so  freely  nowadays  as  the  goal  of  educa- 
tion —  and  so  it  is  —  that  it  is  well  to  show  that  it  is  after  all  through 
imitation  that  the  training  process  must  proceed  even  in  order  to  make 
our  scholars  inventive. 

The  other  chapter  of  Bradley's  —  *  The  Reality  of  Self  —  proceeds 
to  show  that  in  such  a  shifting  self,  constructed  out  of  changing  con- 
tent, we  have  no  right  to  find  reality.  It  is  appearance  only.  This 
involves  the  further  doctrines  of  reality,  appearance,  change,  etc.,  and 
is  too  far-reaching  for  further  notice  here. 

Mr.  Bradley's  View  of  the  Self.  J.  S.  MACKENSIE.  Mind,  N.  S.  III., 
July,  1894,  pp.  304-335- 

Mr.  Mackensie  gives  an  account  of  the  chapter  on  the  Self  of  Mr. 
Bradley's  book,  and  criticises  it  on  the  score  of  certain  omissions. 
He  classifies  Bradley's  meanings  of  'self  under  four  heads  —  the 
•biological.'  the 'psychological,'  the  ' sentient,'  and  the  'pathological' 
self — and  claims  that  two  other  forms  of  'self  must  be  added,  called 
by  him  the  •  epistemological '  and  the  *  ontological '  or  '  ideal.'  The 
epistemological  or  transcendental  self  is  the  form  of  the  thought-pro- 
cess, the  focus  at  which  the  variety  of  experience  is  brought  to  unity 
in  thought.  It  is  the  Ego  of  the  cogito  and  is  not  a  matter  of  content ; 
thus  escaping  Bradley's  reduction  of  the  various  selves  to  particular 
constructions  of  content.  In  psychological  terms,  I  suppose,  this  self 
is  the  function  of  apperception  considered  as  unifying  principle  of 
thought.  The  other  ' self  added  by  Mackensie  is  the  'ontological': 
again  the  formal  principle  of  unity,  but  now  considered  as  the  unity  of 
reality  or  completed  system  —  the  ideal  unity  of  '  the  completely  intel- 
ligible for  the  completely  intelligent.'  Both  these  points  are  familiar 
to  readers  of  Caird. 

As  to  the  matters  of  fact  involved,  I  think  Mr.  Bradley  is  not  well 

1  See  also  Royce's  paper  noticed  further  on. 


Appendix  E  561 

criticised .  The  question  arises,  how  does  '  form '  come  to  conscious- 
ness ?  If  not  as  content,  we  have  to  say,  then  not  at  all.  But  if  not 
at  all,  then  it  must  be  itself  a  matter  of  thought-construction.  For  how 
can  we  say  '  experience  when  thought  has  the  form  of  unity '  except 
by  the  use  of  judgment,  which  must  go  back  again  to  conscious-content 
for  its  matter  ?  So  the  <  transcendental  ego '  becomes  either  the  Kant- 
ian noumenon,  or  reduces  itself  to  the  '  sentient '  self  of  Bradley,  i.e., 
as  I  should  put  it,  it  is  a  matter  of  sentient  or  felt  content  over  and 
above  the  presented  content  of  which  it  is  felt  to  be  the  form.  In 
this  shape  it  loses  much  of  its  mystery  and  is  amenable  to  the  same 
natural-history  treatment  as  other  facts  of  consciousness.  And  the 
' ontological '  or  'ideal' self  is  subject  to  the  same  sort  of  criticism. 
If  there  be  no  real  ego  discovered  in  the  cogito,  apart  from  the  felt  form 
of  the  cognititm,  then  we  have  no  basis  for  an  ideal  ego  discovered  in 
an  ideal  cogito  apart  from  what  we  feel  the  form  of  the  ideal  cognitum 
would  be  if  we  were  able  to  apprehend  it.  Then  presupposing  abso- 
lute reality,  the  ideal  ego  will  be  an  absolute  sentient  ego  —  an  ego 
which  feels  its  own  perfect  content. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Mr.  Bradley  would  accept  this  bald  argu- 
ment to  a  conclusion  near  his  own.  It  certainly  is  much  briefer  than 
his.  And  I  am  sure  that  Mr.  Mackensie  and  his  master  would  say : 
"  not  a  word  about  <  reason '  —  which  is  a  '  higher  level '  than  intellect.'1 
But  of  the  points  still  left  in  current  idealism  for  Mr.  Bradley's  prob- 
ing-knife  of  psychological  analysis,  this  is  the  most  inviting.  I  believe 
that  reason  is  feeling,  and  its  ideals  are  feeling  —  the  onrush  of  habit  and 
emotion  in  their  own  out-reaching  movement  beyond  the  constructions 
of  intellect  which  they  presuppose.  This  is  reason's  nature  and  his- 
tory. It  is  Bradley's  splendid  service  to  have  shown  that  reality  is  as 
much  reality  when  felt  as  when  judged  —  possibly  more,  if  the  pros  and 
cons  of  the  relation  of  feeling  and  thought  to  each  other  be  duly 
weighed. 

The  External  World  and  the  Social  Consciousness.    JOSIAH  ROYCE. 

Philos.  Review,  III.,  pp.  513-545.  September,  1894. 
The  thesis  maintained  by  Professor  Royce  in  this  interesting  paper 
is  this :  "  Social  community  is  the   differentia  of  our  external  world. 
...  A  child  never  gets  his  belief  in  our  present  objective  world  until 
he  has  first  got  his  social  consciousness."    The  arguments  presented  by 
the  author  in  support  of  this  view  are  of  two  kinds.     He  first  shows 
that   the   ordinary   so-called   tests   or   criteria   of   externality  are   not 
valid  or  sufficient,  inasmuch  as  they  omit  the  quality  of  definiteness. 
20 


562  Appendix  E 

All  things  believed  to  be  external  are  definite  in  place,  dimensions, 
number,  and  movement.  But  what  we  really  mean  by  definiteness  is, 
when  analyzed,  communicableness  to  others ;  what  I  cannot  express  to 
my  fellow  and  ratify  together  with  him  —  that  is  not  external,  but  inter- 
nal. The  notion  of  externality  therefore  proceeds  upon  the  sense  of 
social  relationship  or  community.  Apart  from  the  question  of  proof, 
attention  may  be  called  to  Professor  Royce's  acute  note  on  Renouvier's 
thesis,  '  Whatever  is  must  be  determinate,'  and  to  the  use  he  makes 
of  the  sense  of  indefinite  movement  in  after-images  quoted  from 
Fleischl.  In  what  is  said  in  this  part  of  the  paper  we  have,  I  think, 
a  very  original  and  interesting  contribution  to  the  theory  of  externality. 
It  lacks,  however,  detailed  criticism  of  the  criteria  usually  named.  i.e., 
resistance,  regularity,  involuntariness,  etc.,  of  the  external  world.  I 
myself,  for  example,  should  not  feel  driven  out  of  my  view  of  the  'coeffi- 
cient of  external  reality ' J  earlier  worked  out,  even  though  the  whole 
account  of  the  social  consciousness  given  by  Professor  Royce  should 
prove  true.  This  appears  in  the  general  point  of  criticism  made  below. 

In  the  second  part  of  his  paper,  the  author  gives  a  summary  of  a 
theory  of  the  rise  of  the  social  consciousness  based  upon  the  doctrine  of 
imitation,  i.e.,  a  theory  with  which  the  present  reviewer  is  in  sub- 
stantial agreement.  The  essence  of  the  theory  is  that  the  child 
gets  his  material  for  the  personality-sense  from  persons  around  him 
by  imitation.  So  that  his  growing  sense  of  self  is  constantly  behind 
his  growing  sense  of  others.  This  conclusion  affords  the  additional 
argument  that  it  is  through  this  relationship  that  the  antithesis  be- 
tween self  and  the  external  is  discovered  and  the  community  made 
possible  in  which  the  external  world  finds  its  differentia. 

The  one  criticism  which  I  should  venture  to  make  upon  this  paper 
—  as  attractive  in  style  as  thoughtful  in  content  —  is  that  it  neglects 
the  phylogenetic  point  of  view,  the  considerations  from  race-history. 
I  think  the  element  of  social  suggestion  may  be  admitted  to  the  full  as 
Professor  Royce  argues  for  it.  and  yet  the  conclusion  not  follow  that  the 
child  would  not  get  the  notion  of  externality  without  it.  No  more 
should  I  say  that  the  child  would  not  get  a  notion  of  self  without  the 
imitative  copying  of  others  which  we  agree  in  emphasizing  so  strongly. 
Would  not  the  hereditary  impulses  of  thought  and  nervous  action  give 
an  isolated  babe  a  pretty  good  apology  for  an  external  world  and  a 
self  ?  To  say,  '  yes,  but  not  the  same  he  now  has,'  is  only  to  say 
that  the  social  element  is  an  addition.  Certainly  it  is ;  but  is  there  no 

1  Handbook  of  Psychology,  II.,  Chap.  VII.,  §§  4,  5. 


Appendix  F  563 

essential  moment  in  externality  which  must  be  either  there  or  not  there 
to  a  child  ? 

I  think  there  is :  something  in  the  structure  of  the  developed  ner- 
vous system.  The  seeing  of  space  itself  may  carry  externality  in 
presented  objects :  not  not-self-ness,  of  course,  but  blank,  definite, 
awayness  —  da-ness,  so  to  speak.  It  is  the  property  seen  in  the  nervous 
projection  of  stimulations  to  the  periphery.  Little  chickens  seem  to 
have  a  very  respectably  definite  sense  of  dfo-ness,  and  this  without  com- 
paring notes  with  one  another  or  with  the  hen  !  Now  this  sense  of 
projection  may  be  the  essence  of  external  existence  vs.  internal  — 
although  the  antithesis  comes  only  later  and  largely  by  social  develop- 
ment —  and  it  may  be  that  the  elements  even  of  personal  suggestion 
which  the  child  imitates  already  have  it.1  Indeed  I  think  it  can  be 
shown  that  they  have.  It  is  on  this  basis  that  I  recognize,  in  my 
'  coefficient  of  external  reality,'  an  element  which  constitutes  this  kind 
of  objectivity,  and  make  the  '  objective '  stage  first  even  in  the  child's 
knowledge  of  other  persons. 

An  interesting  speculation  would  arise  if  Professor  Royce  should 
work  out  the  social  criterion  in  the  phylogenetic  sphere  ;  by  applying  it, 
for  example,  to  the  quasi-social  community  of  the  different  senses  to- 
gether —  a  test  of  externality  strongly  insisted  upon  sometimes.  If  so, 
I  should  ask  him  how  it  has  come  about  that  a  single  sense  often  so 
strenuously  lies  to  us  about  externality,  in  the  face  of  all  sense  and 
social  testimony,  that  we  have  to  lie  to  ourselves,  almost,  to  keep  back 
our  belief  in  it.  If  it  be  because  this  function,  say,  of  this  sense  is  a 
part  of  habitual  convention  and  former  beliefs  which  are  themselves 
guaranteed,  then  that  illustrates  what  I  should  say  was  the  case  with 
each  organism  as  a  whole  with  reference  to  other  organisms. 


APPENDIX    F 

ANTHROPOLOGICAL  NOTES 

i .  THE  general  position  involved  in  the  '  dialectic  of  personal  growth,' 
to  the  effect  that  early  consciousness  is  objective,  and  that  it  is  by  the 
distinction  among  objects,  which  gives  persons  as  first  projective,  that 

1  Cf.  the  section  on  '  Personality  Suggestion '  in  my  volume  on  Mental  De- 
velopment, and  Chap.  VI.,  §  2,  above,  where  it  is  pointed  out  there  that  there 
is  a  period  of  '  organic '  bashfulness  in  the  child's  first  year  —  showing  a  special- 
ized nervous  reaction  to  the  presence  of  persons. 


564  Appendix  F 

subjective  consciousness  arises,  would  seem  to  have  support  from  the 
argument  made  by  Professor  Hoffding  in  his  Outlines  of  Psychology, 
pp.  2  f.  He  holds  that  the  results  of  philology  are  safe  in  showing 
that  names  of  subjective  states  of  consciousness,  mental  conditions, 
attributes,  etc.,  are  from  roots  which  originally  designated  objects  and 
events  in  the  objective  world.  He  further  uses  this  result  from  philol- 
ogy to  disprove  the  older  theory  of  personification,  which  held  personifi- 
cation to  be  the  original  mould  for  the  conception  of  the  external  world. 
He  is  not  willing,  however,  to  throw  over  the  personification  theory 
altogether  in  favour  of  the  '  dream  '  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  belief  in 
ghosts,  spirits  inhabiting  objects,  and  spiritual  agencies  in  nature ;  for, 
he  thinks,  even  if  the  notion  of  spirits  did  arise  through  dream-per- 
sons, yet  unless  there  were  a  fundamental  personifying  tendency,  the 
dream-persons  would  not  be  understood  to  be  personal  (p.  8),  nor 
would  there  be  any  reason  for  the  primitive  man's  reading  of  them  into 
the  phenomena  of  the  objective  world  generally.  This  seems  to  me 
quite  true ;  *  and  yet  it  is  difficult  to  see  whence  this  personifying  ten- 
dency could  arise  in  the  primitive  man's  mental  growth,  especially  if  he 
began  with  a  purely  objective  consciousness.  The  solution  offered  in 
my  'dialectic1  (cf.  the  section  on  Religion)  fulfils  all  the  requirements 
thus  laid  down  by  Professor  Hoffding ;  and  more,  the  imitative  method 
of  growth  explains  the  origin  both  of  the  subjective-personal  and  of 
the  ejective-personifying  consciousness.  The  subjective  is  an  imitative 
interpretation  of  the  objective  in  terms  of  internal  feeling ;  and  the 
ejective  is  an  imitative  interpretation  of  objective  action  in  terms  of 
the  subjective.  The  truth  of  the  dream  theory  would  then  seem  to  be 
somewhat  this :  that  in  dreams  primitive  man  found  actual  concrete 
and  quasi-social  confirmation  for  the  personifying  or  ejective  interpre- 
tations which  his  own  growth  led  him  to  make,  at  the  same  time  join- 
ing with  his  actual  social  life  to  furnish  materials  for  his  personal 
subjective  interpretations.  Dreams,  and  ghosts,  and  spiritual  portents 
thus  led  him  on  his  way  into  the  realm  of  mystery  which  filled  so  large 
a  place  in  his  religious  development. J 

1  Indeed,  Professor  Hoffding's  treatment  of  this,  and  also  of  the  child's 
personal  development  (pp.  5  f.),  with  the  insistence  on  the  truth  of  recapitu- 
lation, seems  to  be  lacking  only  in  that  it  stops  short  of  the  growth  of  the 
social  self  under  social  stimulation.     Even  the  social  dream  by  primitive  man 
involves  some  social  experience ;   and  the  child's  social  experience  begins  fur- 
ther back  than  his  social  dreams. 

2  Avenarius  makes  the  dream  consciousness  an  important  factor  in  the  his- 


Appendix  F  565 

2.  I  think  there  is  evidence  from  philology,  moreover,  of  the  eject- 
ing or  personifying  tendency  ;  to  be  found  in  our  references  to  the  more 
abstract  and  hidden  processes  of  nature  whose  naming  followed  the  first 
crude  descriptions  made   in  the  objective  period.     For  example,  we 
speak  of  the  chemicals  as  agents ;  of  drugs,  as  having  virtue ;  of  natural 
forces,  as  being  virile ;  of  poisons  and  acids,  as  eating;  of  machines, 
boats,  etc.,  as  she  or  her ;  of  putrid  things,  as  strong ;  of  colours,  as  gay, 
loud,  etc. ;  of  weights  and  electric  circuits  as  dead  and  '  live '  —  to  enu- 
merate a  few  of  many  instances  at  hand. 

3.  I  have  endeavoured  to  find  evidence  as  to  the  place  of  personifica- 
tion in  primitive  language,  by  looking  into  the  growth  of  gender  dis- 
tinctions, thinking  that  the  distinctions  of  gender  could  not  have  been 
embodied  in  the  names  of  natural  objects  (particularly  as  between  the 
personal  genders  and  the  neuter)  without  some  mental  tendency  to 
personification.      But  the  authorities  on  comparative  philology   seem 
entirely  at  sea,  both  as  to  the  history  of  gender  distinctions  and  as  to 
the  linguistic   purposes  which   gender  (especially  the   neuter)   really 
serves.      In   support   of    this    I    may   refer  to   the   re'sume'   given   by 
Professor  Brugmann  in  his  '  Princeton  Lecture '  on  '  The  Nature  and 
Origin  of  the  Noun  Genders'  (New  York:  Scribners,  1897). x 

4.  As  illustrating  the  necessity  for  distinguishing  the  different  forms 
of  ejective  personal  thought  which  arise  in  the  growth  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  so-called  '  fetishism  '  and  '  totemism  '  may  be  mentioned. 
I  am  not  competent  to  go  into  the  controversy  as  to  the  place  of  fetish- 
ism in  early  religion,  whether  it  be  a  degraded  or  a  primitive  form  ;  but 
it  may  be  noticed  that  the  arguments  urged  pro  and  con  by  Max  Miiller 
and  the  followers  of  Waitz  turn  really  upon  the  sort  of  mental  reading- 
in  which  so-called  personification  supposes.     As  a  primitive  form,  ante- 
dating polytheism,  it  would  represent  only  that  beginning  of  ejective 
personal  consciousness  which  we  see  in  the  child  when  personal  sug- 
gestion with  social  rapport,  but  without  distinguishing  whose  suggestion 
or  rapport  with  whom,  is  the  extent  of  his  sense  of  society.     It  seems 

torical  process  of  '  introjection,'  using  the    exposition    of  Tylor's  '  Primitive 
Culture'  (Mensch.  Weltbegriff.,  pp.  32  f.). 

1  The  tendency  is  to  discount  the  'psychologizing'  explanation  attempted 
in  Grimm's  law.  Yet  whether  in  primitive  language  there  is  a  period  in  which 
inanimate  ohjects  have  names  either  exclusively  neuter,  or  lacking  entirely  in 
the  marks  which  are  used  to  denote  sexual  differences  —  this  would  seem  to 
be  a  '  live '  problem,  and  its  answer,  whatever  it  be,  of  great  value  to  the 
anthropologist  and  psychologist. 


566  Appendix  F 

to  me  most  likely  that  the  fetish  is  a  symbol,  or  terminus  of  reaction, 
for  this  sort  of  vague  social  community  with  an  undifferentiated  spirit 
world. 

The  totem,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  stand  for  a  much  more 
advanced  self,  a  self  of  some  reflective  generality  ;  and  to  be  the 
embodiment  of  the  'socius'  consciousness  of  the  group  —  the  family, 
the  tribe,  the  race.  As  such,  it  would  involve  a  certain  distinction 
between  what  is  private  to  the  individual,  and  what  is  public  to  the 
group,  which  we  have  found  so  marked  in  the  child's  social  develop- 
ment at  the  very  beginning  of  his  growth  into  real  moral  personality. 

5.  Does  not  Edward  Caird's  masterly  exposition  of  the  develop- 
ment from  'objective1  to  'subjective,'  and  finally  to  'absolute'  religion, 
require   essentially   the   psychological   movement  seen   in  Avenarius' 
•  introjection  %  when  supplemented  by  the  imitative  motive,  as  in  the 
'  dialectic   of  personal  and  social  growth '  ?     I  may  refer  the  reader 
especially  to  Caird's  summary,  pp.   188  ff.,  Vol.  I.  of  The  Evolution 
of  Religion.     His  'absolute'  religion,  representing  the  final  result  of 
reflection  and  embodying  Mr.  Caird's  metaphysics,  does  not  lend  itself 
so  readily  to  objective  genetic  interpretation.     Without  referring  to 
that,  therefore,  I  may  yet  call  attention  to  the  use  his  development 
makes  of  what  Romanes,  from  a  more  psychological  point  of  view,  calls 
the  'world-eject,'  considered  in  its  objective  and  subjective  religious 
embodiments. 

6.  Apropos  of  Sect.  140,  the  following  passage  may  be  translated 
from  Tylor :  — 

"  There  survives  even  now  in  the  world  a  barbaric  mode  of  bring- 
ing land  under  cultivation,  which  seems  to  show  us  man  much  as 
he  was  when  he  began  to  subdue  the  primeval  forest,  where  till  then  he 
had  only  wandered,  gathering  wild  roots  and  nuts  and  berries.  This 
primitive  agriculture  was  noticed  by  Columbus.  When  landing  in  the 
West  Indies  he  found  the  natives  clearing  patches  of  soil  by  cutting 
the  brushwood  and  burning  it  on  the  spot.  ...  In  Sweden  this  brand- 
tillage,  as  it  may  be  called,  has  lasted  on  into  modern  days,  giving  us 
an  idea  what  the  rough  agriculture  of  the  early  tribes  may  have  been 
like  when  they  migrated  into  Europe.  ...  In  long-past  ages  much  of 
Europe  was  brought  under  cultivation  by  village  communities.  The 
move  upwards  from  the  life  of  the  hunter  to  that  of  the  herdsman  is 
well  seen  in  the  far  north — the  home  of  the  reindeer.  Among  the 
Esquimaux  the  reindeer  are  only  hunted.  But  Siberian  tribes  not  only 
hunt  them  wild,  but  tame  them.  .  .  .  Here  is  seen  a  specimen  of  pas- 
toral life  of  a  simple  rude  kind ;  and  it  is  needless  to  go  on  describing 


Appendix  G  567 

at  length  the  well-known  life  of  higher  nomad  tribes,  who  shift  their 
tents  from  place  to  place  on  the  steppes  of  central  Asia,  or  the  deserts 
of  Arabia,  seeking  pasture  for  their  oxen  and  sheep,  their  camels  and 
horses.  There  is  a  strong  distinction  between  the  life  of  the  wander- 
ing hunter  and  the  wandering  herdsman.  The  hunter  leads  a  life  of 
fewer  appliances  or  comforts,  and,  exposed  at  times  to  starvation,  his 
place  in  civilization  is  below  that  of  the  settled  tiller  of  the  soil.  But 
to  the  pastoral  nomad  the  hunting,  which  is  the  subsistence  of  the  rude 
wanderer,  has  come  to  be  only  an  extra  means  of  life.  His  flocks  and 
herds  provide  him  for  the  morrow ;  he  has  valuable  cattle  to  exchange 
with  the  dwellers  in  towns  for  their  weapons  and  stuffs.  There  are 
smiths  in  his  caravan,  and  the  wool  is  spun  and  woven  by  the  women. 
What  best  marks  the  place  in  civilization  which  the  higher  pastoral  life 
attains  to,  is  that  the  patriarchal  herdsmen  may  belong  to  one  of  the 
great  religions  of  the  world :  thus  the  Kalmuks  of  the  steppes  are 
Buddhists  ;  the  Arabs  are  Moslems.  A  yet  higher  stage  of  prosperity 
and  comfort  is  reached  where  the  agricultural  and  pastoral  life  combine 
as  they  already  did  among  our  forefathers  in  the  village  communities 
of  old  Europe  just  described."  —  TYLOR,  Anthropology,  219  f. 


APPENDIX   G 

DARWIN'S  JUDGMENT 

THE  main  consideration  which  this  paper 1  aims  to  present,  that  of  the 
responsibility  of  all  men,  be  they  great  or  be  they  small,  to  the  same 
standards  of  social  judgment,  and  to  the  same  philosophical  treatment, 
is  illustrated  in  the  very  man  to  whose  genius  we  owe  the  principle  upon 
which  my  remarks  are  based  —  Charles  Darwin;  and  it  is  singularly 
appropriate  that  we  should  also  find  the  history  of  this  very  principle, 
that  of  variations  with  the  correlative  principle  of  selection,  furnishing 
a  capital  illustration  of  our  inferences.  Darwin  was,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception of  Aristotle,  possibly  the  man  with  the  sanest  judgment  that  the 
human  mind  has  ever  brought  to  the  investigation  of  Nature.  He  rep- 
resented, in  an  exceedingly  adequate  way,  the  progress  of  scientific 
method  up  to  his  day.  He  was  disciplined  in  all  the  natural  science  of 
his  predecessors.  His  judgment  was  an  epitome  of  the  scientific  in- 
sight of  the  ages  which  culminated  then.  The  time  was  ripe  for  such 

1  From  the  Pop.  Set.  Monthly,  August,  1896,  p.  532.     Cf.  Chap.  V.,  above. 


568  Appendix  G 

a  great  constructive  thought  as  his  —  ripe,  that  is,  as  far  as  the  accumu- 
lation of  scientific  data  was  concerned.  His  judgment  differed  then 
from  the  judgment  of  his  scientific  contemporaries  mainly  in  that  it 
was  sounder  and  safer  than  theirs.  And  with  it  Darwin  was  a  great 
constructive  thinker.  He  had  the  intellectual  strength  which  put  the 
judgment  of  his  time  to  the  strain  —  everybody's  but  his  own.  This  is 
seen  in  the  fact  that  Darwin  was  not  the  first  to  speculate  in  the  line  of 
his  great  discovery,  nor  to  reach  formulas ;  but  with  the  others  guessing 
took  the  place  of  induction.  The  formula  was  an  uncriticised  thought. 
The  unwillingness  of  society  to  embrace  the  hypothesis  was  justified 
by  the  same  lack  of  evidence  which  prevented  the  thinkers  themselves 
from  giving  it  proof.  And  if  no  Darwin  had  appeared,  the  problem  of 
biological  development  would  have  been  left  about  where  it  had  been 
left  by  the  speculation  of  the  Greek  mind.  Darwin  reached  his  conclu- 
sion by  what  that  other  great  scientific  genius  in  England,  Newton, 
described  as  the  essential  of  discovery,  'patient  thought';  and  having 
reached  it.  he  had  no  alternative  but  to  judge  it  true  and  pronounce  it 
to  the  world. 

But  the  principle  of  variations  with  natural  selection  had  the  recep- 
tion which  shows  that  good  judgment  may  rise  higher  than  the  level 
of  its  own  social  origin.  Even  yet  the  principle  of  Darwin  is  but  a 
spreading  ferment  in  many  spheres  of  human  thought  in  which  it  is 
destined  to  bring  the  same  revolution  that  it  has  worked  in  the  sciences 
of  organic  life.  It  was  not  until  other  men,  who  had  both  authority 
with  the  public  and  sufficient  information  to  follow  Darwin's  thought, 
seconded  his  judgment,  that  his  great  formula  began  to  have  currency 
in  scientific  circles. 

The  passage  referred  to 1  in  Professor  Poulton's  Charles  Darwin  and 
the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection  (Macmillans,  1896,  pp.  12  f.)  is  so  fully 
in  accord  with  the  position  of  my  text  that  I  allow  myself  to  quote  it 
entire :  — 

"  It  is  a  common  error  to  suppose  that  the  intellectual  powers  which 
make  the  poet  or  historian  are  essentially  different  from  those  which 
make  the  man  of  science.  Powers  of  observation,  however  acute,  could 
never  make  a  scientific  discoverer ;  for  discovery  requires  the  creative 
effort  of  the  imagination.  The  scientific  man  does  not  stumble  upon 
new  facts  or  conclusions  by  accident ;  he  finds  what  he  looks  for.  The 
problem  before  him  is  essentially  similar  to  that  of  the  historian  who 
tries  to  create  an  accurate  and  complete  picture  of  an  epoch  out  of 

1  Above,  Sect.  in. 


Appendix  H  569 

scattered  records  of  contemporary  impressions  more  or  less  true,  and 
none  wholly  true.  Fertility  of  imagination  is  absolutely  essential  for 
that  step  from  the  less  to  the  more  perfectly  known,  which  we  call 
discovery. 

"  But  fertility  of  imagination  alone  is  insufficient  for  the  highest 
achievements  in  poetry,  history,  or  science ;  for  in  all  these  subjects  the 
strictest  self-criticism  and  the  soundest  judgment  are  necessary  in  order  to 
insure  that  the  results  are  an  advance  in  the  direction  of  the  truth.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  probable  then  that  the  secret  of  Darwin's  strength  lay  in  the 
perfect  balance  between  his  powers  of  imagination  and  those  of  accurate 
observation,  the  creative  efforts  of  the  one  being  ever  subjected  to  the 
most  relentless  criticism  by  the  employment  of  the  other.  '  We  shall 
never  know,'  I  have  heard  Professor  Michael  Foster  say,  '  the  countless 
hypotheses  which  passed  through  the  mind  of  Darwin,  and  which, 
however  wild  and  improbable,  were  tested  by  an  appeal  to  nature,  and 
were  then  dismissed  forever.' 

"  Darwin's  estimate  of  his  own  powers  is  given  with  characteristic 
candour  and  modesty  in  the  concluding  paragraph  of  his  Aittobiography 
(Life  and  Letters,  1887,  p.  107) :  — 

" '  Therefore  my  success  as  a  man  of  science,  whatever  this  may 
have  amounted  to,  has  been  determined,  as  far  as  I  can  judge,  by  com- 
plex and  diversified  mental  qualities  and  conditions.  Of  these  the 
most  important  have  been  —  the  love  of  science,  —  unbounded  patience 
in  long  reflecting  over  any  subject,  —  industry  in  observing  and  collect- 
ing facts,  —  and  a  fair  share  of  invention  as  well  as  of  common  sense. 
With  such  moderate  abilities  as  I  possess,  it  is  truly  surprising  that  I 
should  have  influenced  to  a  considerable  extent  the  belief  of  scientific 
men  on  some  important  points.' " 


APPENDIX    H 

Comment  by  Professor  Royce  on  Hegers  Social  Theory  (cf.  Sect.  332). 

"  The  '  master  and  slave '  business  is  expressly  presented  as  but  a  very 
brief  and  primitive  stage  in  the  genesis  of  the  social  consciousness, 
even  in  the  Phanomenologie.  In  going  over  the  ground  again,  in  the 
Encyclopadie,  Hegel  explained  in  some  of  the  lecture  notes  (presented 
as  Zus'dtze  in  his  Werke)  that  that  was  a  barbarian  affair,  not  to  be 
regarded  as  related  to  the  modern  civilized  consciousness,  where  the 
Anerkennung,  which  is  everywhere  the  essence  of  individual  self- 


570  Appendix  H 

consciousness,  is  founded  not  upon  mastery,  but  upon  the  dignity  of 
social  office.  The  genesis  of  this  higher  sort  of  consciousness  Hegel 
refers,  in  all  his  works,  to  the  Family,  to  the  State,  and  to  much  the 
same  special  principles  of  correlation  between  growing  self-conscious- 
ness and  social  surroundings  which  you  and  I  now  insist  upon.  Hegel 
was  not  interested  much  in  individual  psychology,  but  he  analyzed  the 
motives  of  social  institutions  and  process  in  a  frequently  quite  genetic 
and  psychological  spirit,  so  far  as  his  time  permitted.  The  family  tie, 
Jhe  relation  of  self  and  one's  critics,  the  relation  of  free  citizen  to  other 
freemen,  —  these  are  very  fundamental  and  fruitful  in  Hegel's  account. 
What  I  miss  in  him  is  an  express  recognition  of  the  imitative  factor  as 
such.  Hegel's  genetic  theory  assumes  that  the  private  self  funda- 
mentally wants  to  possess  everything,  but  finds  itself  limited,  not  merely 
by  physical  forces,  but  by  its  sensitiveness  to  criticism,  to  counter- 
assertion  of  all  sorts,  and  by  that  whole  sense  of  the  complexity  of 
things  which  is  the  very  correlative  of  its  longing  for  universal  mastery. 
Tliis  manifold  limitation  leads,  in  ways  which  Hegel  usually  mentions 
without  any  so  general  explanation  as  yours,  but  for  all  that  by  much 
the  same  road  as  your  theory  follows,  to  ethical  selfhood.  But  your 
theory  insists  that  the  self,  even  in  its  private  desires,  not  only  wants  to 
possess  everything,  but,  within  its  limits,  to  imitate  everybody.  This 
involves,  of  course,  an  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  social  sensitive- 
ness which  does  indeed  go  beyond  Hegel's.  For  his  principles  are 
special,  yours  and  Tarde's  is  very  general." 

—  Extract  from  a  private  letter. 


INDEX 


Accommodation,  social,  176,  477. 

^Esthetic  judgment,  152 ;  invention,  169. 

Alexander,  S.,  57,  88. 

Allen,  G.|  428. 

Altruism,  266,  385  f. 

Analogy,   biological   and   psychological, 

520  f. ;  psychological,  544. 
Animal,  family,  31 ;  distinction  from  man, 

133,  248  ;  plays,  139  f. ;  bashfulness  of, 

201. 

Anthropological  method,  i. 
Antinomy  of  society,  540. 
Anti-social,  suppression  of,  72. 
Aristotle,  482. 
Art,  147  f. 
Association,  217. 
Avenarius,  9,  127. 

Bain,  A.,  97,  121. 
Baldwin,  Mrs.  J.  M.,  201. 
Barnes,  335,  337. 
Bashfulness,  195  f. 
Belief,  121. 
Binet,  337,  403. 
Biogenetic  method,  2. 
Biological  analogy,  520  f. 
Blushing,  203. 

Bradley,  10,  218,  Appendix  E. 
Brentano,  121. 
Bunge,  Appendix  A. 

Caird,  339,  Appendices  E,  F. 

Campbell,  H.,  205. 

Cause,  as  element  in  religion,  337. 

Charcot,  403. 

Children,  inventions  of,  98  f. ;  plays  of, 
139  f- ;  egoism  of,  286  f. ;  religious  de- 
velopment of,  328  f. 

Civil  sanctions,  42  f. 

Colonies,  486. 

Companies,  486. 

Conduct,  rules  of,  524  ff. 

Conflict,  see  Opposition. 

Conscience,  51. 


Conscious  selection,  75, 123,  Appendix  B. 

Conservatism,  174  f. 

Constraint  theory,  480. 

Contagion,  social,  234;  of  crime,  537. 

Contrary  attitude,  117. 

Conventional  sanctions,  413  f. 

Co-operation,  kinds  of,  216  f. 

Cope,  E.  D.,  60. 

Crime,  234  f. ;  contagion  of,  537. 

Criteria  of  truth,  95,  96. 

Crowds,  action  of,  235  f. 

Darwin,  39,  42,  75, 167, 195,  201,  206,  211, 

305  f.,  Appendix  G. 
Decorative  art,  151. 
Deity,  345,  354. 
Delage,  Appendix  B. 
Dependence,  sense  of,  330  ff. ;  stages  in, 

346. 

Design,  as  element  in  religion,  337  f. 
Desire,  258 ;    sanction  of,  363,  372  f., 

Appendix  C. 
Determination,  of  social  progress,  510  f. ; 

r6sume,543;  of  evolution,  Appendix  A. 
Dewey,  211. 
Dialectic,  of  personal  growth,  7 ;  of  social 

growth,  512  f. ;  re'sume^  543. 
Direction  of  social  progress,  515. 
Dugas,  L.,  208. 
Durkheim,  480. 

Egoism,  286,  385  f. 

Ejective  stage,  8. 

Eimer,  75. 

Emotion,  social,  185  ff. ;  instinctive  and 

reflective,  185  f. 
Ends,  257;    of  desire,  375  f. ;   objective 


and  philosophical,  376. 

Environment,  social,  64  ff. 

Epochs  of  social  life,  245. 

Esprit  de  corps,  232,  407  f. 

Ethical,  self,  34  ff. ;  origin  of,  39  f. ;  physi- 
cal basis  of,  55;  sentiment,  297  f. ; 
publicity  of,  311  f. ;  practical  reason, 

571 


572 


Index 


320  f. ;    dependence,  342  ;    sanction, 
394  f.,  434  f. ;    diseases  of,  403 ;   rela- 
tion  to  religious,  441 ;    rules,  532  f. ; 
ethical  conflict,  538,  Appendix  C. 
Evolution,  Appendix  A. 

Fact,  sanction  of,  367. 

Family,  animal,  31. 

Feeling  of  dependence,  331  f. ;  of  mys- 
tery, 332,  347  f. 

Fiske,  61. 

Fitness,  social,  71  f. ;  sanction  of,  367. 

FleischI,  Appendix  E. 

Forces,  social,  449  ff. ;  particularizing, 
455  f-  '•  generalizing,  465  f. 

Foster,  M.,  Appendix  G. 

Galton,  F.,  65,  452. 

Generalizing  social  force,  465  f.. 

Generosity,  20. 

Genetic  method,  2. 

Genius,  155  ff. 

Giddings,  F.,  483,  485. 

God,  see  Deity. 

Groos,  K.,  139,  153,  202,  210. 

Group-selection,  182. 

Growth,  social,  512  f. 

Guyau,  26,  56,  92,  228. 

Habit,  39  f.,  55 ;  social,  170,  477. 

Handwriting,  social  use  of,  137. 

Hartmann,  153. 

Hedonic  sanction,  lower,  368  f. ;  higher, 
392  f. 

Hegel,  500,  502  f..  Appendix  H. 

Henslow,  Appendix  A. 

Herbart,  Appendix  E. 

Heredity,  social,  57  ff.,  see  Social  hered- 
ity, Appendix  A;  physical,  61,  64  ff., 
77,  454,  462. 

Hirsch,  166. 

Historical  method,  i. 

Hodge,  C.  W.,  201. 

HOffding.  9,  88,  Appendix  F. 

Hudson,  142,  241,  Appendix  A. 

Huxley,  40,  55.  305  f.,  Appendix  C. 

Ideas,  selection  of,  183. 

Idiot,  83. 

Imagination,  92,  147. 

Imitation,  in  personal  growth,  8;  plastic, 

70,  230 ;  learning  by,  102  f. ;  social,  229 ; 

i.  theory  of  social  organization,  478. 


Imitative,  selection,  75,  Appendix  B; 
art,  151,  181 ;  process,  507  f. 

Impersonal  intelligence,  253. 

Impulse,  sanction  ot,  363;  rules  in 
sphere  of,  525  f. 

Individual,  the,  as  social  force,  452, 
455  f. ;  and  society,  resume,  543  f. 

Instinct,  social,  185  f. ;  co-operation,  216. 

Intelligence,  247  f. ;  impersonal,  253; 
personal,  257 ;  social  use  of,  269  ff. ; 
social,  282. 

Intelligent  rules,  527  f. 

Interests,  social,  74  ff. ;  sanction  of,  383. 

Intermarriage,  78. 

Invention,  90  ff. ;  of  children,  98  f.;  per- 
sonal, loo ;  social,  109  f . ;  social  aids 
to,  126  f.;  of  genius,  168  f. ;  scientific 
and  aesthetic,  169  f. 

Inventive  lies,  no. 

James.  W.,  77.  93,  97,  133,  154.  ail,  262, 

Janet,  Pierre,  403. 

Jealousy,  225. 

Judgment,  social,  84,  121;  private,  123; 

aesthetic,    152 ;     of   the    genius,    159, 

Appendix  G. 

Kidd,  B.,  88,  412,  442. 

I^acombe,  489. 

Language,  as  aid  to  invention,   127  f. ; 

method  of  learning,   128;    social  use 

of,  34,  274. 
Lapie,  475. 

Le  Bon,  228,  235,  489,  508. 
Lilienfeld,  478. 
Liberalism,  179. 
Lie,  inventive,  no. 
Loeb,  Appendix  A. 
Logic,  social,  482. 
Lombroso,  C.,  166. 

Mackensie,  57,  504,  Appendix  E. 

Man  distinguished  from  animal,  133. 

Marshall.  H.  R.,  151. 

Matter  of  social  organization,  475  f., 
487  f. 

Method,  of  procedure,  if.;  pf  social  or- 
ganization, 476. 

Mivart,  307. 

Mob-action,  230,  235  i. 

Modesty,  195. 

Moral,  see  Ethical, 


Index 


573 


Morgan,  Lloyd,  55,  57,  60,  75,  123,  133, 

Appendix  A. 
Mosso,  A.,  195,  199,  211. 
Motive,  as  sanction,  380. 
Motor  type,  26,  119. 
Muller,  Max,  Appendix  F. 
Mystery,  feeling  of,  in  religion,  347  f.,  355. 

Natural  sanctions,  406  f. 
Necessity,  sanction  of,  367. 
Nomadic  epoch,  214  f. 
Nordau,  76,  166. 
Novikow,  478,  482,  489,  514. 

Obedience,  35. 

Objects  of  desire,  377  ff. 

'  Obstruction  '  theory  of  thought,  97. 

Opposition,  social,  230  f.,  405  ff.,  445 ; 

ethical,  538. 

Organic,  emotion,  186;  sympathy,  222. 
Organic  selection,  521,  Appendix  A. 
Organization,  social,  475  ff. ;  see  Social 

organization. 
Ormond,  A.  T.,  121. 
Osborn,  H.  F.,  Appendix  A,  Appendix  B. 

Particularizing  social  force,  455  f. 
Paulsen,  331,  339. 
Pedagogical  sanctions,  413. 
Person,  imitative,  7  ff. ;  inventive,  90. 
Personal,  growth,  dialectic  of,  7 ;  intelli- 
gence, 257 ;  sanctions,  358  ff. 
Personality,  mystery  of,  to  child,  350. 
Pfeffer,  Appendix  A. 
Plastic  imitation,  230. 
Plasticity,  nervous,  64  ;  social,  305. 
Play,  139  f.,  242  f. 
Poulton,  167,  Appendix  G. 
Practical  reason,  320  f. 
Private  judgment,  123. 
Process  of  social   organization,   475  f., 

S°7  f- 
Progress,  biological,  452  f. ;  social,  510  f., 

515  f. ;  resume,  543. 
Projective  stage,  7. 
Psychogenetic  method,  2. 
Psychological  analogy,  520  f.,  544. 
Public,   opinion,    175,    183 ;    sentiment, 

312  f. ;  sanction  of,  418. 
Publicity,  311  f.,  495  f. 

Reading,  social  use  of,  137. 
Reason,  practical,  320  f. 


Reasonable  action,  256. 

Recapitulation,  theory  of,  188  f. 

Reciprocity,  280,  497. 

Reflective  emotion,  185  f. ;  co-operation, 
217 ;  sympathy,  223. 

Regression,  in  biology,  452  f. 

Religious  sentiment,  327  f. ;  elements  of 
religion,  529  f. ;  definition  of,  357 ; 
sanction,  434  f. ;  doctrine,  438  f. ;  rela- 
tion to  ethical,  441. 

Renouvier,  Appendix  E. 

Reverence  in  religion,  350. 

Revolt,  see  Opposition. 

Right,  sanction  of,  363,  394  f. 

Ritchie,  57. 

Romanes,  55,  133. 

Roux,  Appendix  B. 

Royce,  9  f.,  116,  124,  138,  228,  231  f.,  319, 
504,  Appendices  C,  E,  H. 

Rules  of  conduct,  524  ff. ;  impulsive, 
525 ;  intelligent,  527 ;  ethical,  532  f. 

Sachs,  Appendix  A. 

Sanctions,  personal,  358  ff. ;  of  impulse, 
363  f. ;  objective  and  subjective,  366 ; 
of  fact,  theory,  necessity,  survival,  fit- 
ness, 367 ;  lower  hedonic,  368  ;  of  de- 
sire, 372;  of  science  and  truth,  381  f. ; 
of  success,  382  f. ;  higher  hedonic,  392 ; 
of  right,  394  f. ;  social,  405  ff. ;  natural, 
406  f. ;  pedagogical  and  conventional, 
413;  '  rational,' 412;  civil,  421  f . ;  eth- 
ical and  religious,  434  f. ;  resume,  542. 

Schleiermacher,  331. 

Schneider,  208. 

Science,  sanction  for,  381. 

Scientific  invention,  169. 

Selection,  conscious,  social,  etc.,  75,  Ap- 
pendix B. ;  of  thoughts,  93 ;  social  and 
imitative,  181;  natural,  453;  organic, 
54,  Appendix  A. 

Selective  thinking,  120  f. 

Self,  genesis  of,  i ;  consciousness,  7  ff. ; 
ethical  self,  34  ff. ;  exhibition  in  art, 
148  f.,  213;  determination  of,  375  f. ; 
realization  of,  376;  social,  514,  Ap- 
pendix E. 

Self-thought-situation,  492  f. 

Selfishness,  20,  266. 

Sensory  type,  26,  119. 

Sentiment,  294  f. ;  genesis  of,  294  f.; 
ethical,  297;  social,  311;  religious, 
327  f- 


574 


Index 


Shame,  206  f. 

Shyness,  203. 

Sighele,  228,  234.  241,  508. 

Sigwart,  12. 

Simiand,  F..  475,  478,  523. 

Simmel,  481. 

Smith,  Adam,  42.  483,  501  f.,  505  f. 

Socialism,  423. 

Social  aids  to  invention,  126  f. 

Social  contagion,  234. 

Social  emotion,  227  f. 

Social  epochs,  245. 

Social  esprit  de  corps,  407  f. 

Social    forces,  449    ff. ;    particularizing, 

455  *• 

Social  growth,  dialectic  of,  512  f. 
Social  habit  and  accommodation,  170  f., 

477- 

Social  heredity,  57  ff,  Appendix  A. 
Social  intelligence,  282. 
Social  judgment,  84  f.,  124. 
Social  logic,  482 

Social  matter  and  process,  475,  507 
Social  method,  476  f. 
Social  organization,  475  ff.;  theories  of, 

478  ff. ;  matter  of,  487  f. 
Social  opposition,  230  f.,  405  ff. 
Social  person,  57  f.,  87. 
Social  progress,  510  f.,  515  f. ;  resume, 

543- 

Social  sanction,  359,  405  ff. 

Social  selection,  181. 

Social  self,  514. 

Social  sense,  Appendix  E. 

Social  sentiment,  311. 

Social  suggestibility,  227. 

Social  suppression,  71  f. 

Social  variations,  82. 

Sociality,  genesis  of,  Appendix  D. 

Society,  as  social  force,  452,  465  f. ;  so- 
cieties as  groups,  486;  and  the  indi- 
vidual, resume,  542  f. 

Sociological  method,  i  f. 

Socius,  24. 

Speech,  see  Language. 

Spencer,  H.,  75,  94,  151,  156,  211,  305  f., 
482,  522. 


Spontaneous  co-operation,  217. 

Statistical  method,  i  f. 

Stephen,  42,  57,  88,  534. 

Sterrett,  J.  D.,  92. 

Stout,  i2i,  153. 

1  Struggle  for  existence,'  45$. 

Subjective  stage,  8. 

1  Subordination '  theory,  480. 

Success  as  sanction,  383. 

Suggestions,    of   personality,   7;    social, 

227 ;  theory,  480. 
Sully.  20,  47,  49.  335,  338. 
Suppression,  social,  71  f. 
Survival,  sanction  of,  367. 
Sympathy,    37,    39,    42,    220    f. ;    social 

theory,  482. 

Tarde,  88,  228,  233  f.,  478  f.,  508. 

Tawney,  G.  A.,  Appendix  D. 

Test  of  invention,  114. 

Things  as  facts  and  as  objects  of  desire, 

377  ^ 
Thinking,   variations    in,  93;    selective, 

120  f. 

Thought  as  social  matter,  488  ff. 
Tonnies,  486. 
Topinard,  213,  556. 
Tradition,  60. 
Truth,  criteria  of,  95,  96,  124;  sanction 

of.  381. 
Tylor,  339,  Appendix  F. 

Unfit,  the  socially,  71  f. 
Urban,  W.  M.,  95,  122. 
Utilitarianism,  322  f. 

Variations,  social,  82  f.,  163 ;  genius,  154 ; 
biological,  453. 

Waitz,  Appendix  F. 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  307,  Appendix  A. 

Warren,  H.  C.,  531. 

Weismann,  57,  452  f.,  Appendix  A. 

Westermarck,  213. 

Worlds  of  fact  and  desire,  377  f. 

Worms,  R.,  478. 

Wundt,  Appendix  E. 


MENTAL  DEVELOPMENT 


THE  CHILD  AND  THE  RACE. 


JAMES   MARK  BALDWIN,  M.A.,  Ph.D., 

With  Seventeen  Figures  and  Ten  Tables.    8vo.    pp.  xvi,  496.    Cloth. 
Price,  $2.60. 


FROM    THE    PRESS. 

"  It  is  of  the  greatest  value  and  importance." —  The  Outlook. 

•'A  most  valuable  contribution  to  biological  psychology." —  The  Critic. 

"Thorough,  candid,  and  suggestive  :  in  thorough  touch  with  the  researches  of 
the  day." —  The  Week  (Toronto,  Canada). 

"  Professor  Baldwin  has  treated  in  this  book  a  subject  that  is  new  and  full  of 
absorbing  interest.  .  .  .  Many  will  find  Professor  Baldwin's  book  stimulating."  — 
The  American  Journal  of  Psychology . 

"  An  exceedingly  valuable  book,  and  will  be  read  with  great  interest  by  teachers, 
cultured  parents,  and  psychologists."  —  Popular  Science  News. 

"  This  summary  sketch  can  give  no  idea  of  the  variety  of  topics  which  Professor 
Baldwin  handles,  or  of  the  originality  with  which  his  central  thesis  is  worked  out. 
No  psychologist  can  afford  to  neglect  the  book."  —  The  Dial. 

"  The  first  real  successful  effort  at  a  presentation  of  the  psychological  process 
from  the  genetic  point  of  view  —  the  central  idea  of  the  growing,  developing  being." 

—  The  Child-Study  Monthly. 

"  A  book  .  .  .  treating  of  a  subject  fraught  with  significant  revelations  for  every 
branch  of  educational  science  is  Professor  J.  Mark  Baldwin's  treatise  on  Mental  De- 
velopment in  '  The  Child  and  the  Race.'  Professor  Baldwin's  work  is  comparatively 
untechnical  in  character  and  written  in  a  terse  and  vigorous  style,  so  that  it  will 
commend  itself  to  unprofessional  readers.  The  educational,  social,  and  ethical 
implications,  in  which  the  subject  abounds,  the  author  has  reserved  for  a  second 
volume,  which  is  well  under  way  ;  the  present  treats  of  methods  and  processes. 
Having  been  led  by  his  studies  and  experiments  with  his  two  little  daughters  to  a 
profound  appreciation  of  the  genetic  function  of  imitation,  he  has  sought  to  work 
out  a  theory  of  mental  development  in  the  child  incorporating  this  new  insight.  A 
clear  understanding  of  the  mental  development  of  the  individual  child  necessitates 
a  doctrine  of  the  race  development  of  consciousness  —  the  great  problem  of  the 
evolution  of  mind.  Accordingly  Professor  Baldwin  has  endeavored  to  link  to- 
gether the  current  biological  theory  of  organic  adaptation  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
infant's  development  as  that  has  been  fashioned  by  his  own  wide,  special  researches. 
Readers  familiar  with  the  articles  of  Professor  Haeckel  now  running  in  'Ihe  Open 
Court  will  understand  the  import  of  a  theory  which  seeks  to  unite  and  explain  one 
by  the  other  the  psychological  aspects  of  ontogenesis  and  phylogenesis.  As  Pro- 
fessor Baldwin  says,  it  is  the  problem  of  Spencer  and  Romanes  attacked  from 
a  new  and  fruitful  point  of  view.  There  is  no  one  but  can  be  interested  in  the 
numerous  and  valuable  results  which  Professor  Baldwin  has  recorded ;  teachers, 
parents,  and  psychologists  alike  will  find  in  his  work  a  wealth  of  suggestive  matter." 

—  The  Open  Court. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY, 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK. 


BALDWIN'S 

HANDBOOK  OF  PSYCHOLOGY. 

VOL.  I.       SENSES  AND    INTELLECT. 

By  JAMES  MARK  BALDWIN,  Professor  in  Princeton  University,     xiv  +  343  pp. 
8vo.     Second  Edition.     Teachers'  price,  8s.  6</.,  net;  $  1.80. 

VOL.  II.      FEELING   AND   WILL. 

xii  +  394  pp.     8vo.     Teachers'  price,  8j.  6</.,  net;  $2.00. 


Revue  Philosophique.  —  "An  excellent  treatise  on  Psychology,  superior,  and 
much  superior,  to  perhaps  any  other  that  we  know.  ...  It  is  profound  without 
losing  in  clearness,  and  complete  without  being  too  long." 

Nature.  —  "Well  arranged,  carefully  thought  out,  clearly  and  terselywritten.it 
will  be  welcomed  in  this  country  as  it  has  been  welcomed  in  America." 

Mind  (London).  —  "  It  is  interesting  to  see  the  scholastic  petrifaction  of  Aristotle 
which,  in  various  ways,  has  been  handed  on  or  restored  in  modern  times  .  .  . 
breaking  up  under  the  influence  of  independent  thought  or  new  knowledge.  The 
opportunity  may  be  seized  (ad  ed.)  to  recommend  the  book  with  some  more 
emphasis  as  a  very  serviceable  manual  for  students." 

The  Nation.  —  "  Taken  as  a  whole  it  is  about  the  best  we  know." 

Revista  de  filosofia  scientifica.  — "  Uniting  with  great  ability  the  new  and  the 
old,  and  making  room  for  the  results  of  the  experimental  method  within  the  more 
refined  outlines  of  the  classical  scheme,  he  has  succeeded  in  producing  a  work 
on  Psychology  which  is  valuable  and  noteworthy,  especially  as  an  attempt  at  the 
conciliation  of  the  two  schools." 

Friedrich  Jodl  in  ZKITSCHRIFT  FUR  PHI  LOS.  UNU  PHI  LOS.  KRITIK.— "  A  merit 
of  the  work  of  J.  M.  B.  is  that  it  maintains  the  standpoint  of  exact  method.  .  .  . 
Most  of  the  chapters  are  rich  in  material,  terse  and  vigorous  in  form,  logical  in 
arrangement.  The  whole  thoroughly  serves  its  purpose  as  an  exponent  of  the ' 
educational  literature  of  Psychology  in  which  the  Americans  and  English  are  far 
ahead  of  us,  and  which  makes  for  higher  culture  in  general." 

Oxford  Magazine.  —  "Senses  and  Intellect  is  the  best  manual  we  have  seen, 
and  we  look  forward  to  the  companion  volume." 

Manchester  Guardian.  —  "A  noteworthy  addition  to  psychological  literature." 

Academy.  —  "To  those  in  search  of  a  general  systematic  account  of  mental 
phenomena,  thoroughly  informed,  and  embodying  the  results  of  the  most  recent 
inquiry,  Professor  Baldwin's  '  Handbook '  may  be  most  cordially  commended. 
It  is  indeed  just  the  book  a  genuine  student  needs." 

Scotsman.  —  "  The  work  is  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  that  have  appeared  in 
recent  times  to  vindicate  the  claims  and  establish  the  position  of  Psychology  as  an 

independent  science The  book  is  certainly  a  most  able  one,  and  one  which 

cannot  fail  to  make  its  mark  as  a  contribution  to  psychological  study." 

I 


BALDWIN'S 

ELEMENTS  OF  PSYCHOLOGY. 

By  JAMES  MARK  BALDWIN,  Professor  in  Princeton  College,      xvi  +  372  pp. 
I2mo.     Teachers'  price,  -js. ;  $1.50. 


Mind.  — "  We  congratulate  Professor  Baldwin  on  having  succeeded  in  his  main 
aim.  He  has  produced  a  really  good  text-book  for  elementary  classes,  presenting 
the  newest  essentials  of  the  science  in  a  single  compact  volume  at  reasonable 
cost." 

University  Correspondent.  — "  It  is  on  the  whole  a  good  piece  of  work,  and  we 
do  not  know  an  elementary  book  on  psychology  which  we  would  prefer  to  this  for 
the  use  of  a  beginner." 

G.  M.  Duncan,  Professor  in  Yale  University,  in  PSYCHOLOGICAL  REVIEW.— 
"  We  regard  it  on  the  whole  as  the  best  elementary  text-book  on  psychology  now 
before  the  public.  It  is  written  from  the  scientific  standpoint,  and  in  a  thoroughly 
scientific  spirit,  by  one  versed  in  the  literature  and  acquainted  with  the  latest 
advances  of  the  science." 

Journal  of  Education  (London).  —  "We  doubt  if  a  better  introduction  to 
mental  science  has  yet  been  written." 

Lloyd  Morgan  in  NATURE. —  "  It  appears  to  us  to  possess  the  great  merit  of 
giving  abundant  evidence  of  independent  thought  and  treatment.  It  will,  in  the 
hands  of  senior  students,  stimulate  them  to  thought  and  criticism  ;  such  criticism 
as  the  teacher  who  is  in  earnest  welcomes  like  a  breath  of  keen  fresh  air." 

Revista  critica  de  filosofia.  —  "  This  book  is  full  of  exact  and  finished  analysis, 
replete  with  facts,  lucid  in  style  and  arrangement.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  recom- 
mend its  translation  [into  Italian]." 


LONDON : 

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NEW  YORK: 
HENRY   HOLT   &   CO. 


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